I had seen the damp lying on the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all night, and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief.
Interpretation
The quote evokes imagery of sadness and despair, using a damp window as a metaphor for emotional turmoil.
In this quote, Charles Dickens illustrates the powerful connection between the external environment and internal emotions. The dampness on the window, likened to a goblin's tears, symbolizes sorrow and evokes a sense of melancholy, emphasizing how our surroundings can reflect or influence our emotional states.
In practice
In a literary analysis discussion about how nature reflects emotions in Dickens' work.
I recollected one story there was in the village, how that on a certain night in the year (it might be that very night for anything I knew), all the dead people came out of the ground and sat at the heads of their own graves till morning.
A silent look of affection and regard when all other eyes are turned coldly away-the consciousness that we possess the sympathy and affection of one being when all others have deserted us-is a hold, a stay, a comfort, in the deepest affliction, which no wealth could purchase, or power bestow.
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.
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.
You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer,” said Miss Pross, in her breathing. “Nevertheless, you shall not get the better of me. I am an Englishwoman.
Christmas is a poor excuse every 25th of December to pick a man's pockets.
I think most people gain some sense of how to look at a painting, but no one ever teaches you how to look at a piece of silver.
I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.
Some might think that the creativity, imagination, and flights of fancy that give my life meaning are insanity.
Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.
Wine ... offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than possibly any other purely sensory thing which may be purchased.
When I write, I don't know what is going to emerge. I begin in a condition of complete unknowing, an utter nakedness of concept or goal. A word appears, another word appears, an image. It is a moving into mystery.
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