Charles Dickens

The Christmas season reminds us that a demonstration of religion is always much better than a definition of it...especially in front of the kids._x000D_ _x000D_ Perhaps the best Yuletide decorations are to be wreathed in smiles and wrapped in hugs._x000D_ _x000D_ The miracle of Christmas is that a baby can be so decisive._x000D_ _x000D_ It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty founder was a child himself.

Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused - in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened - by the recurrence of Christmas.

Old Time, that greatest and longest established spinner of all!... his factory is a secret place, his work is noiseless, and his Hands are mutes.

I have sometimes sat alone here of an evening, listening, until I have made the echoes out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by and by into our lives. "Jerry, say that my answer was, 'RECALLED TO LIFE.

I want to escape from myself. For when I do start up and stare myself seedily in the face, as happens to be my case at present, my blankness is inconceivable--indescribable--my misery amazing.

The broken heart. You think you will die, but you just keep living, day after day after terrible day.

You are in every line I have ever read.

All partings foreshadow the great final one.

I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt, and, of course, if it ceased to beat, I would cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no—sympathy—sentiment—nonsense.

Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Scattered wits take a long time in picking up.

Take the pencil and write under my name, 'I forgive her.

Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.

Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies.

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

For the rest of his life, Oliver Twist remembers a single word of blessing spoken to him by another child because this word stood out so strikingly from the consistent discouragement around him.

The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by this light it becomes a coherent scheme, and not the monstrous maze the laity are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their expense, and surely they will cease to grumble.

Time has been lost and opportunity thrown away, but I am yet a young man, and may retrieve it.

My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

And O there are days in this life, worth life and worth death.

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