Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world’s most memorable fictional characters and is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period.
His novels, most published in monthly or weekly installments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction. Charles Dickens novels and short stories continue to be widely popular.
Charles Dickens quotes that will help you become a better person.
Charles Dickens Quotes on Life
Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.
We forge the chains we wear in life.
Other Famous Charles Dickens Quotes
A good, contented, well-breakfasted juryman is a capital thing to get hold of. Discontented jurymen always find for the plaintiff.
A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
A mob is usually a creature of very mysterious existence, particularly in a large city. Where it comes from, or whither it goes, few men can tell. Assembling and dispersing with equal suddenness, it is as difficult to follow to its various sources as the sea itself; nor does the parallel stop here, for the ocean, is not more fickle and uncertain, more terrible when roused, more unreasonable or crueler.
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.
Alas! how few of nature’s faces there are to gladden us with their beauty! The cares, and sorrows, and hungerings of the world change them, as they change hearts; and it is only when the passions sleep and have lost their hold forever that the troubled cloud pass off, and leave heaven’s surface clear. it is a common thing for the countenances of the dead, even in that fixed and rigid state to subside into the long-forgotten expression of infancy, and settle into the very look of early life. So calm, so peaceful do they grow again, that those who knew them in their happy childhood, kneel by the coffin’s side in awe, and see the angels even upon earth.
Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you have him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.
An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.
Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he’s well dressed. There ain’t much credit in that.
Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.
Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.
Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows – and china.
Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay.
Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.
Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.
Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.
Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.
Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.
He had but one eye and the pocket of prejudice runs in favor of two.
Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.
I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.
I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing, when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.
I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.
I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.
I think it must somewhere be written, that the virtues of mothers shall be visited on their children, as well as the sins of the fathers.
If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.
In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.
It always grieves me to contemplate the initiation of children into the ways of life when they are scarcely more than infants. It checks their confidence and simplicity, two of the best qualities that heaven gives them, and demands that they share our sorrows before they are capable of entering into our enjoyments.
It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.
It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.
It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away.
It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
It will generally be found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples.
It’s my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.
Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.
Mature affection, homage, devotion, does not easily express itself. Its voice is low. it is modest and retiring, it lays in ambush and waits. Such is the mature fruit. Sometimes a life glides away, and finds it still ripening in the shade. The light inclinations of very young people are as dust compared to rocks.
May I tell you why it seems to me a good thing for us to remember wrong that has been done us? That we may forgive it.
May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?
Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions.
Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.
Nature often enshrines gallant and noble hearts in weak bosoms; oftenest, God bless her, in women’s breast.
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.
Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are!
Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.
Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many – not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.
Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.
Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human nature.
The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.
The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.
The first external revelations of the dry-rot in men is a tendency to lurk and lounge; to be at street corners without intelligible reason; to be going anywhere when met; to be about many places rather than any; to do nothing tangible but to have an intention of performing a number of tangible duties to-morrow or the day after.
The old, old fashion – death! Oh, thank God, all those who see it, for that older fashion yet – of immortality!
The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.
The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.
The sum of the whole is this: walk and be happy; walk and be healthy. The best way to lengthen out our days is to walk steadily and with a purpose. The wandering man knowsof certain ancients, far gone in years, who have staved off infirmities and dissolution by earnest walking – hale fellows, close upon ninety, but brisk as boys.
The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.
There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.
There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.
There are times when ignorance is bliss, indeed.
There is a Sunday conscience, as well as a Sunday coat; and those who make religion a secondary concern put the coat and conscience carefully by to put on only once a week.
There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.
There is no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.
There is no substitute for thorough-going, ardent, and sincere earnestness.
There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.
To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.
Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!
What is meant by a “knowledge of the woorld” is simply an acquaintance with the infirmities of men.
Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.
When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.
You don’t carry in your countenance a letter of recommendation.
“The world,” is a conventional phrase, which being interpreted, signifies all the rascality in it.
Charles Dickens Quotes on Christmas
Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!
I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
