Charles Dickens

With affection beaming out of one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.

A man who could build a church, as one may say, by squinting at a sheet of paper.

Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.

Accidents will occur in the best regulated families.
Charles Dickens - David Copperfield, 1849
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.

Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
Charles Dickens - A Tale Of Two Cities
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!
Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
We need never be ashamed of our tears.
Charles Dickens - Great expectations
Spring is the time of the year, when it is summer in the sun and winter in the shade.
Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities
It is a far, far better thing that I do now, then I have ever done before... it is a far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known before.
Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.
Charles Dickens - The Old Curiosity Shop
I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.
Charles Dickens - A Tale Of Two Cities
It is a far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.
Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all doing direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Charles Dickens - Bleak House
It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.
Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.
Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tries, and a touch that never hurts.

I do not know the American gentleman, god forgive me for putting two such words together.

Train up a fig tree in the way it should go, and when you are old sit under the shade of it.

- Charles Dickens