Charles Dickens quotes - page 19

There was not one straight floor from the foundation to the roof the ceilings were so fantastically clouded by smoke and dust, that old women might have told fortunes in them better than in grouts of tea . . . (Charles Dickens)
. . . trifles make the sum of life. View quote
Charles Dickens
All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else's manufacture, is reasonable enough but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make, as good money. View quote
Charles Dickens
Shes the sort of woman now, said Mould, ... one would almost feel disposed to bury for nothing and do it neatly, too. View quote
Charles Dickens
It was the beginning of a day in June the deep blue sky unsullied by a cloud, and teeming with brilliant light. The streets were, as yet, nearly free from passengers, the houses and shops were closed, and the healthy air of morning fell like breath from angels, on the sleeping town. View quote
Charles Dickens
Then idiots talk, said Eugene, leaning back, folding his arms, smoking with his eyes shut, and speaking slightly through his nose, of Energy. If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that I abominate, it is energy. View quote
Charles Dickens
Her heart--is given him, with all its love and truth. She would joyfully die with him, or, better than that, die for him. She knows he has failings, but she thinks they have grown up through his being like one cast away, for the want of something to trust in, and care for, and think well of. . . . View quote
Charles Dickens
His philanthropy was of that gunpowderous sort that the difference between it and animosity was hard to determine. View quote
Charles Dickens
In particular, there was a butler in a blue coat and bright buttons, who gave quite a winey flavour to the table beer he poured it out so superbly. View quote
Charles Dickens
Of all the ruinous and desolate places my uncle had ever beheld, this was the most so. It looked as if it had once been a large house of entertainment but the roof had fallen in, in many places, and the stairs were steep, rugged, and broken. There was a huge fire-place in the room into which they walked, and the chimney was blackened with smoke but no warm blaze lighted it up now. The white feathery dust of burnt wood was still strewed over the hearth, but the stove was cold, and all was dark and gloomy. View quote
Charles Dickens
It was a very aged, ghostly place the church had been built many hundreds of years ago, and had once had a convent or monastery attached for arches in ruins, remains of oriel windows, and fragments of blackened walls, were yet standing-, while other portions of the old building, which had crumbled away and fallen down, were mingled with the churchyard earth and overgrown with grass, as if they too claimed a burying-place and sought to mix their ashes with the dust of men. (Charles Dickens)
It is a sensation not experienced by many mortals, said he, to be looking into a churchyard on a wild windy night, and to feel that I no more hold a place among the living than these dead do, and even to know that I lie buried somewhere else, as they lie buried here. Nothing uses me to it. A spirit that was once a man could hardly feel stranger or lonelier, going unrecognized among mankind, than I feel. View quote
Charles Dickens
I feel an earnest and humble desire, and shall till I die, to increase the stock of harmless cheerfulness. View quote
Charles Dickens
It was a harder day's journey than yesterday's, for there were long and weary hills to climb and in journeys, as in life, it is a great deal easier to go down hill than up. However, they kept on, with unabated perseverance, and the hill has not yet lifted its face to heaven that perseverance will not gain the summit of at last. View quote
Charles Dickens
. . . she indulged in melancholy - that cheapest and most accessible of luxuries . . . View quote
Charles Dickens
His gaze wandered from the windows to the stars, as if he would have read in them something that was hidden from him. Many of us would, if we could but none of us so much as know our letters in the stars yet - or seem likely to do it, in this state of existence - and few languages can be read until their alphabets are mastered. View quote
Charles Dickens
But the words she spoke of Mrs Harris, lambs could not forgive . . . nor worms forget. View quote
Charles Dickens
I know quite enough of myself, said Bella, with a charming air of being inclined to give herself up as a bad job, and I don't improve upon acquaintance . . . View quote
Charles Dickens
Its matter was not new to me, but was presented in a new aspect. It shook me in my habit - the habit of nine-tenths of the world - of believing that all was right about me, because I was used to it . . . View quote
Charles Dickens
Mind and matter, said the lady in the wig, glide swift into the vortex if immensity. Howls the sublime, and softly sleeps the calm Ideal, in the whispering chambers of Imagination. View quote
Charles Dickens
If its individual citizens, to a man, are to be believed, it always is depressed, and always is stagnated, and always is at an alarming crisis, and never was otherwise though as a body, they are ready to make oath upon the Evangelists, at any hour of the day or night, that it is the most thriving and prosperous of all countries on the habitable globe. (Charles Dickens)
Stranger, pause and ask thyself the question, Canst thou do likewise If not, with a blush retire. View quote
Charles Dickens
Indeed, it may be laid down as a general principle, that the more extended the ancestry, the greater the amount of violence and vagabondism for in ancient days those two amusements, combining a wholesome excitement with a promising means of repairing shattered fortunes, were at once the ennobling pursuit and the healthful recreation of the Quality of this land. View quote
Charles Dickens
The day was made for laziness, and lying on one's back in green places, and staring at the sky till its brightness forced one to shut one's eyes and go to sleep . . . View quote
Charles Dickens
Tongue well thats a wery good thing when it ant a woman. View quote
Charles Dickens