Charles Dickens

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.

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.

Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.

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.

Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he's well dressed. There ain't much credit in that.

It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.

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.

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

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!

On the motionless branches of some trees, autumn berries hung like clusters of coral beads, as in those fabled orchards where the fruits were jewels . . .

Around and around the house the leaves fall thick, but never fast, for they come circling down with a dead lightness that is sombre and slow.

When men are about to commit, or sanction the commission of some injustice, it is not uncommon for them to express pity for the object either of that or some parallel proceeding, and to feel themselves, at the time, quite virtuous and moral, and immensely superior to those who express no pity at all. This is a kind of upholding of faith above works, and is very comfortable.

To have a cricket on the hearth is the luckiest thing in all the world!

The American elite is almost beyond redemption. . . . Moral relativism has set in so deeply that the gilded classes have become incapable of discerning right from wrong. Everything can be explained away, especially by journalists. Life is one great moral mush--sophistry washed down with Chardonnay. The ordinary citizens, thank goodness, still adhere to absolutes.... It is they who have saved the republic from creeping degradation while their 'betters' were derelict.

Lawyers hold that there are two kinds of particularly bad witnesses--a reluctant witness, and a too-willing witness.

My meaning is, that no man can expect his children to respect what he degrades.

The sum of the whole is this: walk and b« happy! walk and be healthy. The best of all ways to lengthen ourdays, is notas Mr. Thomas Moore has it, " ]To steal a few hours from night, my love;" but with leave, be it spoken, to walk steadily and with a purpose.

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.