Charles Dickens quotes - page 16

As he glided stealthily along, creeping beneath the shelter of the walls and doorways, the hideous old man seemed like some loathsome reptile, engendered in the slime and darkness through which he moved crawling forth, by night, in search of some rich offal for a meal. (Charles Dickens)
. . . she better liked to see him free and happy, even than to have him near her, because she loved him better than herself. View quote
Charles Dickens
Now, Bella suspected by this time that Mr. Rokesmith admired her. Whether the knowledge (for it was rather that than suspicion) caused her to incline to him a little more, or a little less, than she had done at first whether it rendered her eager to find out more about him, because she sought to establish reason for her distrust, or because she sought to free him from it was as yet dark to her own heart. But at most times he occupied a great amount of her attention . . . View quote
Charles Dickens
Miss Mills replied, on general principles, that the Cottage of content was better than the Palace of cold splendour, and that where love was, all was. View quote
Charles Dickens
It's nothing, returned Mrs Chick. It's merely change of weather. We must expect change. View quote
Charles Dickens
Captain Cuttle, like all mankind, little knew how much hope had survived within him under discouragement, until he felt its death-shock. View quote
Charles Dickens
The worst class of sum worked in the every-day world is cyphered by the diseased arithmeticians who are always in the rule of Subtraction as to the merits and successes of others, and never in Addition as to their own. View quote
Charles Dickens
I believe no satirist could breathe this air. If another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among us tomorrow, he would be hunted down. If you have any knowledge of our literature, and can give me the name of any man, American born and bred, who has anatomized our follies as a people, and not as this or that party and who has escaped the foulest and most brutal slander, the most inveterate hatred and intolerant pursuit it will be a strange name in my ears, believe me. View quote
Charles Dickens
Around and around the house the leaves fall thick, but never fast, for they come circling down with a dead lightness that is sombre and slow. View quote
Charles Dickens
Why, I don't exactly know about perjury, my dear sir, replied the little gentleman. Harsh word, my dear sir, very harsh word indeed. It's a legal fiction, my dear sir, nothing more. View quote
Charles Dickens
Buy an annuity cheap, and make your life interesting to yourself and everybody else that watches the speculation. (Charles Dickens)
Oh, a dainty plant is the ivy green, That creepeth o'er ruins old Of right choice food are his meals, I ween, In his cell so lone and cold. Creeping where no life is seen, A rare old plant is the ivy green. View quote
Charles Dickens
The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the God of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and in short you are for ever floored. View quote
Charles Dickens
Look round and round upon this bare bleak plain, and see even here, upon a winter's day, how beautiful the shadows are Alas it is the nature of their kind to be so. The loveliest things in life, Tom, are but shadows and they come and go, and change and fade away, as rapidly as these. View quote
Charles Dickens
When we came within sight of the sea, the waves on the horizon, caught at intervals above the rolling abyss, were like glimpses of another shore with towers and buildings. View quote
Charles Dickens
A tranquil summer sunset shone upon him as he approached the end of his walk, and passed through the meadows by the river side. He had that sense of peace, and of being lightened of a weight of care, which country quiet awakens in the breasts of dwellers in towns. View quote
Charles Dickens
One disagreeable result of whispering is that it seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence, haunted by the ghosts of sound-strange cracks and tickings, the rustling of garments that have no substance in them, and the tread of dreadful feet that would leave no mark on the sea-sand or the winter snow. View quote
Charles Dickens
We came to the house, and it is an old house, full of great chimneys where wood is burnt on ancient dogs upon the hearth, and grim portraits (some of them with grim legends, too) lower distrustfully from the oaken panels of the walls. View quote
Charles Dickens
It is a silent, shady place, with a paved courtyard so full of echoes, that sometimes I am tempted to believe that faint responses to the noises of old times linger there yet, and that these ghosts of sound haunt my footsteps as I pace it up and down. View quote
Charles Dickens
The first diabolical character who intruded himself on my peaceful youth (as I called to mind that day at Dullborough), was a certain Captain Murderer. This wretch must have been an off-shoot of the Blue Beard family, but I had no suspicion of the consanguinity in those times. His warning name would seem to have awakened no general prejudice against him, for he was admitted into the best society and possessed immense wealth. Captain Murderer's mission was matrimony, and the gratification of a cannibal appetite with tender brides. View quote
Charles Dickens
The young woman who brought me acquainted with Captain Murderer had a fiendish enjoyment of my terrors, and used to begin, I remember - as a sort of introductory overture - by clawing the air with both hands, and uttering a long low hollow groan. So acutely did I suffer from this ceremony in combination with this infernal Captain, that I sometimes used to plead I thought I was hardly strong enough and old enough to hear the story again just yet. (Charles Dickens)
They enter, locking themselves in, descend the rugged steps, and are down in the Crypt. The lantern is not wanted, for the moonlight strikes in at the groined windows, bare of glass, the broken frames for which cast patterns on the ground. The heavy pillars which support the roof engender masses of black shade, but between them there are lanes of light. View quote
Charles Dickens
With throbbing veins and burning skin, eyes wild and heavy, thoughts hurried and disordered, he felt as though the light were a reproach, and shrunk involuntarily from the day as if he were some foul and hideous thing. View quote
Charles Dickens
Thus, it comes to pass, that a certain room in a certain old hall, where a certain bad lord, baronet, knight, or gentleman, shot himself, has certain planks in the floor from which the blood will not be taken out. You may scrape and scrape, as the present owner has done, or plane and plane, as his father did, or scrub and scrub, as his grandfather did, or burn and burn with strong acids, as his great-grandfather did, but, there the blood will still be - no redder and no paler - no more and no less - always just the same. View quote
Charles Dickens
Being that rare sort of old girl that she receives Good to her arms without a hint that it might be Better and catches light from any little spot of darkness near her. View quote
Charles Dickens