Charles Dickens Quotes & Sayings

“It's over, and can't be helped, and that's one consolation, as they always say in Turkey, when they cut the wrong man's head off.”

“Credit is a system whereby a person who cannot pay gets another person who cannot pay to guarantee that he can pay.”

“The meagre lighthouse, all in white and haunting the seaboard as if it were the ghost of an edifice that once had colour and rotundity, dripped melancholy tears after its late buffeting by the waves.”

“Of all bad listeners, the worst and most terrible to encounter is the person who is so fond of listening that they wish to hear not only your conversation, but that of every other person in the room.”

“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.”

“Circumstances beyond my individual control.”

“There is no such passion in human nature as the passion for gravy among commercial gentlemen.”

“When the moon shines very brilliantly, a solitude and stillness seem to proceed from her that influence even crowded places full of life.”

“Money and goods are certainly the best of references.”

“I confess I have yet to learn that a lesson of the purest good may not be drawn from the vilest evil.”

“In the majority of cases, conscience is an elastic and very flexible article.”

“But the mere truth won't do. You must have a lawyer.”

“Train up a fig tree in the way it should go; when you are old, sit under its shade.”

“The sun himself is weak when he first rises, and gathers strength and courage as the day gets on.”

“Sudden shifts and changes are no bad preparation for political life.”

“The plain rule is to do nothing in the dark, to be a party to nothing underhanded or mysterious, and never to put his foot where he cannot see the ground.”

“If the parks be 'the lungs of London,' we wonder what Greenwich Fair is — a periodical breaking out, we suppose — a sort of spring rash.”

“An evening wind uprose too, and the slighter branches cracked and rattled as they moved, in skeleton dances, to its moaning music.”

“All partings foreshadow the great final one.”

“I have been, as the phrase is, liberally educated, and am fit for nothing.”

“Stranger, pause and ask yourself: can you do likewise? If not, with a blush, retire.”

“There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.”

“I find the nights long, for I sleep but little, and think much.”

“Let me see you ride a donkey over my green again, and as sure as you have a head upon your shoulders, I'll knock your bonnet off, and tread upon it!”