1,913 Quotes by Charles Dickens

On the appointed day -- I think it was the next day, but no matter -- Traddles and I repaired to the prison where Mr. Creakle was powerful. It was an immense and solid building, erected at a vast expense. I could not help thinking, as we approached the gate, what an uproar would have been made in the country, if any deluded man had proposed to spend one half the money it had cost, on the erection of an industrial school for the young, or a house of refuge for the deserving old.

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.

I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.

the lesser grindstone stood alone there in the calm morning air, with a red upon it that the sun had never given, and would never take away.

I thought it very touching to see these two women, coarse and shabby and beaten, so united; to see what they could be to one another; to see how they felt for one another, how the heart of each to each was softened by the hard trials of their lives. I think the best side of such people is almost hidden from us. What the poor are to the poor is little known, excepting to themselves and God.

A man may live to be as old as Methuselah,’ said Mr. Filer, ‘and may labour all his life for the benefit of such people as those; and may heap up facts on figures, facts on figures, facts on figures, mountains high and dry; and he can no more hope to persuade ’em that they have no right or business to be married, than he can hope to persuade ’em that they have no earthly right or business to be born. And that we know they haven’t. We reduced it to a mathematical certainty long ago!

There are strings in the human heart that had best not be vibrated.

The miserable man was a man of that confined stolidity of mind that he could not discuss my prospects without having me before him.

He knew more of my intended career than I knew myself. I should be well enough educated for my destiny if I could "hold my own" with average young man in prosperous circumstances.