Quotes by Charles Dickens

Accidents will occur in the best regulated families.

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

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

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.

Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature.

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

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

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. — 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. — A Tale of Two Cities

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery. — David Copperfield, 1849

We need never be ashamed of our tears. — Great Expectations

It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.
Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870), Bleak House

So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise. — 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. — Great Expectations

Tell Wind and Fire where to stop but don't tell me. — A Tale of Two Cities

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

Spring is the time of the year, when it is summer in the sun and winter in the shade. — Great Expectations

I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us. — The Old Curiosity Shop

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! — A Tale Of Two Cities