1,913 Quotes by Charles Dickens

There is a passion for hunting something deeply implanted in the human breast.

Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed," cried the phantom, "not to know, that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused!

In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.

There are chords in the human heart- strange, varying strings- which are only struck by accident; which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most passionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual touch.

Nothing of what is nobly done is ever lost.

On the eve of long voyages or an absence of many years, friends who are tenderly attached will seperate with the usual look, the usual pressure of the hand, planning one final interview for the morrow, while each well knows that it is but a poor feint to save the pain of uttering that one word, and the meeting will never be. Should possibilities be worse to bear than certainties?

So now, as an infallible way of making little ease great ease, I began to contract a quantity of debt.

I think it must somewhere be written that the virtues of mothers shall be visited on their children, as well as the sins of their fathers.

There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.