1,913 Quotes by Charles Dickens

Poetry's unnat'ral; no man ever talked poetry 'cept a beadle on boxin' day.

If they would rather die, . . . they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a little patronage more so.

A Being, erect upon two legs, and bearing all the outward semblance of a man, and not of a monster.

No one is useless in the world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else.

I don't know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings. "I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to every-body! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!

'I believe, Mr. Snitchey,' said Alfred, 'there are quiet victories and struggles, great sacrifices of self, and noble acts of heroism, in it - even in many of its apparent lightnesses and contradictions - not the less difficult to achieve, because they have no earthly chronicle or audience - done every day in nooks and corners, and in little households, and in men's and women's hearts - any one of which might reconcile the sternest man to such a world, and fill him with belief and hope in it...

A man ain't got no right to be a public man, unless he meets the public views.

Its very pulse, if I may use the word, was like no other clock. It did not mark the flight of every moment with a gentle second stroke, as though it would check old Time, and have him stay his pace in pity, but measured it with one sledge-hammer beat, as if its business were to crush the seconds as they came trooping on, and remorselessly to clear a path before the Day of Judgment.