Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world’s best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognized him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.
His 1843 novella A Christmas Carol remains especially popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London. His 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities is his best-known work of historical fiction. The most famous celebrity of his era, he undertook, in response to public demand, a series of public reading tours in the later part of his career.
The term Dickensian is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social or working conditions, or comically repulsive characters
List of quotes
| Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image. |
| The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again. |
| The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself. |
| The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother. |
| The first rule of business is: Do other men for they would do you. |
| The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none. |
| The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons. |
| Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many – not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some. |
| Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human nature. |
| Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly. |
| Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs. |
| 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. |
| ‘Tis love that makes the world go round, my baby. |
| 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. |
| That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity’s small change in general society. |
| 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. |
| No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else. |
| 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! |
| You don’t carry in your countenance a letter of recommendation. |
| When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people. |
| 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. |
| We forge the chains we wear in life. |
| There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth. |
| Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess! |
| There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts. |
| This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in. |
| There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart. |
| There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated. |
| There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk. |
| There are not a few among the disciples of charity who require, in their vocation, scarcely less excitement than the votaries of pleasure in theirs. |
| There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast. |
| We are so very ‘umble. |
| Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay. |
| Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he’s well dressed. There ain’t much credit in that. |
| Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts. |
| Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire. |
| Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine. |
| Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true. |
| 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. |
| Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door. |
| Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew. |
| Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse. |
| 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. |
| He had but one eye and the pocket of prejudice runs in favor of two. |
| Do you spell it with a “V” or a “W”?’ inquired the judge. ‘That depends upon the taste and fancy of the speller, my Lord’. |
| It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations. |
| Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions. |
| May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs? |
| Life is made of ever so many partings welded together. |
| Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence. |
| It’s my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained. |
| It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. |
| 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. |
| He would make a lovely corpse. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known. |
| 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. |
| If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers. |
| I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. |
| I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. |
| It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away. |
| A loving heart is the truest wisdom. |
| A day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self. |
| A boy’s story is the best that is ever told. |
| A person who can’t pay gets another person who can’t pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don’t make either of them able to do a walking-match. |
| 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. |
| A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. |