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Quotes by Charles Dickens

A day wasted on others is not wasted on one's self.
– Charles Dickens
A lady of what is commonly called an uncertain temper - a phrase which being interpreted signifies a temper tolerably certain to make everybody more or less uncomfortable.
– Charles Dickens
A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
– Charles Dickens
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.
– Charles Dickens
Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he's well dressed. There ain't much credit in that.
– Charles Dickens
Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.
– Charles Dickens
'Bah,' said Scrooge. 'Humbug!'
– Charles Dickens
Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.
– Charles Dickens
But I am sure that I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round... as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely.
– Charles Dickens
Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay.
– Charles Dickens
Do you spell it with a V or a W?' inquired the judge. 'That depends upon the taste and fancy of the speller, my Lord'.
– Charles Dickens
Eccentricities of genius.
– Charles Dickens
Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.
– Charles Dickens
Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.
– Charles Dickens
Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!
– Charles Dickens
Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.
– Charles Dickens
He had but one eye and the pocket of prejudice runs in favor of two.
– Charles Dickens
He would make a lovely corpse.
– Charles Dickens
I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.
– Charles Dickens
I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.
– Charles Dickens
I only ask for information.
– Charles Dickens
I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.
– Charles Dickens
I revere the memory of Mr. F. as an estimable man and most indulgent husband, only necessary to mention Asparagus and it appeared or to hint at any little delicate thing to drink and it came like magic in a pint bottle; it was not ecstasy but it was comfort.
– Charles Dickens
I wants to make your flesh creep.
– Charles Dickens
I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
– Charles Dickens
If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.
– Charles Dickens
If you could see my legs when I take my boots off, you'd form some idea of what unrequited affection is.
– Charles Dickens
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.
– Charles Dickens
It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.
– Charles Dickens
It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away.
– Charles Dickens
It was a good thing to have a couple of thousand people all rigid and frozen together, in the palm of one's hand.
– Charles Dickens
Keep out of Chancery. It's being ground to bits in a slow mill; it's being roasted at a slow fire; it's being stung to death by single bees; it's being drowned by drops; it's going mad by grains.
– Charles Dickens
Keep up appearances whatever you do.
– Charles Dickens
Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.
– Charles Dickens
Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.
– Charles Dickens
Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.
– Charles Dickens
Minerva House... was a finishing establishment for young ladies, where some twenty girls of the ages from thirteen to nineteen inclusive, acquired a smattering of everything and a knowledge of nothing.
– Charles Dickens
Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions.
– Charles Dickens
Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.
– Charles Dickens
Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.
– Charles Dickens
Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.
– Charles Dickens
Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.
– Charles Dickens
Take example by your father, my boy, and be very careful of vidders all your life, specially if they've kept a public house, Sammy.
– Charles Dickens
The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.
– Charles Dickens
The first rule of business is: Do other men for they would do you.
– Charles Dickens
The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother.
– Charles Dickens
The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.
– Charles Dickens
The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.
– Charles Dickens
The sergeant was describing a military life. It was all drinking, he said, except that there were frequent intervals of eating and love making.
– Charles Dickens
The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.
– Charles Dickens
There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.
– Charles Dickens
There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.
– Charles Dickens
There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.
– Charles Dickens
There might be some credit in being jolly.
– Charles Dickens
This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in.
– Charles Dickens
To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.
– Charles Dickens
Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!
– Charles Dickens
We are so very 'umble.
– Charles Dickens
We know, Mr. Weller - we, who are men of the world - that a good uniform must work its way with the women, sooner or later.
– Charles Dickens
Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.
– Charles Dickens
When you're a married man, Samivel, you'll understand a good many things as you don't understand now; but whether it's worth while, going through so much, to learn so little, as the charity-boy said when he got to the end of the alphabet, is a matter o taste.
– Charles Dickens
You don't carry in your countenance a letter of recommendation.
– Charles Dickens
The law is [sic] a ass - a idiot.
– Charles Dickens
A man who could build a church, as one may say, by squinting at a sheet of paper.
– Charles Dickens
Accidents will occur in the best regulated families.
– Charles Dickens
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.
– Charles Dickens
Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature.
– Charles Dickens
Train up a fig tree in the way it should go, and when you are old sit under the shade of it.
– Charles Dickens
With affection beaming out of one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.
– Charles Dickens
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.
– Charles Dickens
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all doing direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
– Charles Dickens
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.
– Charles Dickens
We need never be ashamed of our tears.
– Charles Dickens
There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.
– Charles Dickens
There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.
– Charles Dickens
The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.
– Charles Dickens
That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity's small change in general society.
– Charles Dickens
Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many - not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
– Charles Dickens
It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.
– Charles Dickens
Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.
– Charles Dickens
Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship and pass the rosy wine.
– Charles Dickens
Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.
– Charles Dickens
A boy's story is the best that is ever told.
– Charles Dickens