Quotes by Charles Dickens

About Charles Dickens:

Charles John Huffam Dickens is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Eleven years she had lived in the dark house and its gloomy garden. He was jealous of the very light and air getting to her, and they kept her close. He stopped the wide chimneys, shaded the little windows, left the strong-stemmed ivy to wander where...

Charles Dickens

But the windows of the house of Memory, and the windows of the house of Mercy, are not so easily closed as windows of glass and wood. They fly open unexpectedly; they rattle in the night; they must be nailed up. Mr. The Englishman had tried nailing t...

Charles Dickens

Reflect upon your present blessings -- of which every man has many -- not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

Charles Dickens

It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas when the Great Creator was a child himself.

Charles Dickens

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.

Charles Dickens

It is no worse, because I write of it. It would be no better, if I stopped my most unwilling hand. Nothing can undo it; nothing can make it otherwise than as it was.

Charles Dickens

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show

Charles Dickens

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a F...

Charles Dickens

For our path in life...is stony and rugged now, and it rests with us to smooth it. We must fight our way onward. We must be brave. There are obstacles to be met, and we must meet, and crush them!

Charles Dickens

The streets looked small, of course. The streets that we have only seen as children always do I believe when we go back to them

Charles Dickens

It will be your duty, and it will be your pleasure too to estimate her (as you chose her) by the qualities that she has, and not by the qualities she may not have.

Charles Dickens

My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in ...

Charles Dickens

I know enough of the world now to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything

Charles Dickens

There can't be a quarrel without two parties, and I won't be one. I will be a friend to you in spite of you. So now you know what you've got to expect

Charles Dickens

The society of girls is a very delightful thing, Copperfield. It's not professional, but it's very delightful.

Charles Dickens

I believed, from the solitary and thoughtful way in which my mother murmured her song, that she was alone. And I went softly into the room. She was sitting by the fire, suckling an infant, whose tiny hand she held against her neck. Her eyes were look...

Charles Dickens

I laboured hard at my book, without allowing it to interfere with the punctual discharge of my newspaper duties; and it came out and was very successful. I was not stunned by the praise which sounded in my ears, notwithstanding that I was keenly aliv...

Charles Dickens

have you taken leave of your senses

Charles Dickens

My dear Copperfield,” he replied. “To a man possessed of the higher imaginative powers, the objection to legal studies is the amount of detail which they involve. Even in our professional correspondence,” said Mr. Micawber, glancing at some let...

Charles Dickens

To have all those noble Romans alive before me, and walking in and out for my entertainment, instead of being the stern taskmasters they had been at school, was a most novel and delightful effect.

Charles Dickens

All was over in a moment. I had fulfilled my destiny. I was a captive and a slave. I loved Dora Spenlow to distraction! She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don't know what she was - anything that no one ever saw, and everything...

Charles Dickens

Author Bio

  • NameCharles Dickens
  • DescriptionEnglish writer and social critic
  • AliasesCharles John Huffam Dickens
  • BornFebruary 7, 1812
  • DiedJune 9, 1870
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist; Journalist; Social Critic
  • WorksThe Pickwick Papers; Oliver Twist; A Christmas Carol; David Copperfield; Bleak House; Hard Times; Little Dorrit; A Tale Of Two Cities; Great Expectations