Explore Quotes by Charles Dickens

How many young men, in all previous times of unprecedented steadiness, had turned suddenly wild and wicked for the same reason, and, in an ecstasy of unrequited love, taken to wrench off door-knockers, and invert the boxes of rheumatic watchmen!

In every life, no matter how full or empty ones purse, there is tragedy. It is the one promise life always fulfills. Thus, happiness is a gift, and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes, and to add to other peoples store of it.

Eccentricities of genius.

It is well for a man to respect his own vocation whatever it is and to think himself bound to uphold it and to claim for it the respect it deserves

I would like to be going all over the kingdom...and acting everywhere. There's nothing in the world equal to seeing the house rise at you, one sea of delightful faces, one hurrah of applause!

My hair stands on end at the cost and charges of these boys. Why was I ever a father! Why was my father ever a father!

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.

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.

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.

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.

That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity's small change in general society.

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?

It's my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.

You don't carry in your countenance a letter of recommendation.

The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.

Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions.

'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'.

There might be some credit in being jolly.