Charles Dickens
144 quotes
Biography
"Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine."
"There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor."
"Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart."
"I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be."
"There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts."
"Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape."
"A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other."
"Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle."
"What greater gift than the love of a cat."
"I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul."
"There is a wisdom of the head, and... there is a wisdom of the heart."
"And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire."
"Before I go,"he said, and paused -- "I may kiss her?"It was remembered afterwards that when he bent down and touched her face with his lips, he murmured some words. The child, who was nearest to him, told them afterwards, and told her grandchildren when she was a handsome old lady, that she heard him say, "A life you love."
"A man is lucky if he is the first love of a woman. A woman is lucky if she is the last love of a man."
"That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day."
"Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes."
"In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice."
"There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose."
"And a beautiful world we live in, when it is possible, and when many other such things are possible, and not only possible, but done-- done, see you!-- under that sky there, every day."
"He went to the church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and for, and patted the children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of homes, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed of any walk, that anything, could give him so much happiness. (p. 119)"
"Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their daily pilgrimage through the world."
"She was the most wonderful woman for prowling about the house. How she got from one story to another was a mystery beyond solution. A lady so decorous in herself, and so highly connected, was not to be suspected of dropping over the banisters or sliding down them, yet her extraordinary facility of locomotion suggested the wild idea."
"So, I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me."
"Poetry makes life what lights and music do the stage."
"It is not possible to know how far the influence of any amiable, honest-hearted duty-doing man flies out into the world, but it is very possible to know how it has touched one's self in going by."