1,913 Quotes by Charles Dickens

Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.

I have seen you give him looks and smiles this very night, such as you never give to—me.""Do you want me then," said Estella, turning suddenly with a fixed and serious, if not angry look, "to deceive and entrap you?""Do you deceive and entrap him, Estella?""Yes, and many others—all of them but you.

But Physician was a composed man, who performed neither on his own trumpet, nor on the trumpets of other people. Many wonderful things did he see and hear, and much irreconcilable moral contradiction did he pass his life among; yet his equality of compassion was no more disturbed than the Divine Master's of all healing was. He went, like the rain, among the just and unjust, doing all the good he could, and neither proclaiming it in the synagogues nor at the corner of streets.

what I want you to be - I don't mean physically but morally: you are very well physically - is a firm fellow, a fine firm fellow, with a will of your own, with resolution. with determination. with strength of character that is not to be influenced except on good reason by anybody, or by anything. That's what I want you to be. That's what your father, & your mother might both have been

What is he to learn? To imitate? Or to avoid? When your friends the bees worry themselves about their sovereign, and become perfectly distracted touching the slightest monarchical movement, are we men to learn the greatness of Tuft-hunting, or the littleness of the Court Circular? I am not clear, Mr. Boffin, but that the hive may be satirical.'At all events, they work,' said Mr. Boffin.Ye-es,' returned Eugene, disparagingly, 'they work; but don't you think they overdo it?

I should be an affected women, if I made any pretence of being surprised by my son's inspiring such emotions; but I can't be indifferent to anyone who is so sensible on his merits

I can't go into a long explanation before company; but I couldn't help it, upon my honour."Upon your what?" growled Sikes, with excessive disgust. "Here! Cut me off a piece of that pie, one of you boys,to take the taste of that out of my mouth, or it'll choke me dead.

Why look'e, young gentleman," said Toby, "when a man keeps himself so very ex-clusive as I have done, and by that means has a snug house over his head with nobody a-prying and smelling about it, it's rather a starling thing to have the honour of a wisit from a young gentleman (however respectable and pleasant a person he may be to play cards with at conweniency) circumstanced as you are.

It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page.