1,913 Quotes by Charles Dickens

What do you mean, Phib?" asked Miss Squeers, looking in her own little glass, where, like most of us, she saw - not herself, but the reflection of some pleasant image in her own brain.

what such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance.

Freedom of opinion! Where is it? I see a press more mean and paltry and silly and disgraceful than any country ever knew, - if that be its standard, here it is. ... I speak of Miss Martineau, and all parties... shower down upon her a perfect cataract of abuse. "But what has she done? Surely she praised America enough!" - "Yes, but she told us of some of our faults, and Americans can't bear to be told of their faults.

We'll start to forget a place once we left it

Now you’re just a stranger, with all my secrets.

The Spirit of your child bewails the dead, and mingles with the dead—dead hopes, dead fancies, dead imaginings of youth,’ returned the Bell, ‘but she is living. Learn from her life, a living truth. Learn from the creature dearest to your heart, how bad the bad are born. See every bud and leaf plucked one by one from off the fairest stem, and know how bare and wretched it may be. Follow her! To desperation!

But Rosa soon made the discovery that Miss Twinkleton didn't read fairly. She cut the love-scenes, interpolated passages in praise of female celibacy, and was guilty of other glaring pious frauds.

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!

I believe that virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen,... even if Gargery and Boffin did not speak like gentlemen, they were gentlemen.