Charles Dickens
You can't make a head and brains out of a brass knob with nothing in it. You couldn't do it when your uncle George was living much less when he's dead.Collection: Uncles
You hear, Eugene?' said Lightwood over his shoulder. 'You are deeply interested in lime.' 'Without lime,' returned that unmoved barrister at law, 'my existence would be unilluminated by a ray of hope.Collection: Law
Be guided, only by the healer of the sick, the raiser of the dead, the friend of all who were afflicted and forlorn, the patient Master who shed tears of compassion for our infirmities. We cannot but be right if we put all the rest away, and do everything in remembrance of Him. There is no vengeance and no infliction of suffering in His life, I am sure. There can be no confusion in following Him, and seeking for no other footsteps, I am certain!Collection: Compassion
I mean a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after all if it should prove to be a way of usefulness and good service leading to no other. All generous spirits are ambitious, I suppose, but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road, instead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is of the kind I care for.Collection: Lying
I am no more annoyed when I think of the expression, than I should be annoyed by a man's opinion of a picture of mine, who had no eye for pictures; or of a piece of music of mine, who had no ear for music.Collection: Eye
There are very few moments in a man's existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat.Collection: Men
Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed," cried the phantom, "not to know, that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused!Collection: Christian
Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's nephew. "You don't mean that, I am sure?" "I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? what reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough.Collection: Uncles
Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die?Collection: Heart
I only know that it was, and ceased to be; and that I have written, and there I leave it.Collection: Knows
A multitude of people and yet solitude.Collection: People
Do you want to be a gentleman, to spite her or to gain her over? Because, if it is to spite her, I should think - but you know best - that might be better and more independently done by caring nothing for her words. And if it is to gain her over, I should think - but you know best - she was not worth gaining over.Collection: Caring
And still I stood looking at the house, thinking how happy I should be if I lived there with her, and knowing that I never was happy with her, but always miserable.Collection: Thinking
My dear young lady, crime, like death, is not confined to the old and withered alone. The youngest and fairest are too often its chosen victims.Collection: Crime
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.Collection: Doors
and it was not until I began to think, that I began fully to know how wrecked I was, and how the ship in which I had sailed was gone to pieces.Collection: Thinking
There wasn't room to swing a cat there.Collection: Cat
Circumstances beyond my individual control.Collection: Individual
Black are the brooding clouds and troubled the deep waters, when the Sea of Thought, first heaving from a calm, gives up its DeadCollection: Giving Up
So the case stands, and under all the passion of the parties and the cries of battle lie the two chief moving causes of the struggle. Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this as of many many other evils ... the quarrel between North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel.Collection: Lying
In fine weather the old gentelman is almost constantly in the garden; and when it is too wet to go into it, he will look out the window at it, by the hour together. He has always something to do there, and you will see him digging, and sweeping, and cutting, and planting, with manifest delight.Collection: Cutting
I will die here where I have walked. And I will walk here, though I am in my grave. I will walk here until the pride of this house is humbled.Collection: Pride
I have heard it said that as we keep our birthdays when we are alive, so the ghosts of dead people, who are not easy in their graves, keep the day they died upon.Collection: People
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.Collection: Nature
Go ye, who rest so placidly upon the sacred Bard who had been young, and when he strung his harp was old, and had never seen the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging their bread; go, Teachers of content and honest pride, into the mine, the mill, the forge, the squalid depths of deepest ignorance, and uttermost abyss of man's neglect, and say can any hopeful plant spring up in air so foul that it extinguishes the soul's bright torch as fast as it is kindled!Collection: Teacher
The privileges of the side-table included the small prerogatives of sitting next to the toast, and taking two cups of tea to other people's one.Collection: Two
Polly put the kettle on, we'll all have tea.Collection: Tea
The bearings of this observation lays in the application of it.Collection: Statistics
"Why, I don't exactly know about perjury, my dear sir," replied the little gentleman. "Harsh word, my dear sir, very harsh word indeed. It's a legal fiction, my dear sir, nothing more."Collection: Funny
I revere the memory of Mr. F. as an estimable man and most indulgent husband, only necessary to mention Asparagus and it appeared or to hint at any little delicate thing to drink and it came like magic in a pint bottle; it was not ecstasy but it was comfort.Collection: Memories
"Do not repine, my friends," said Mr. Pecksniff, tenderly. "Do not weep for me. It is chronic."Collection: Friendship
Buy an annuity cheap, and make your life interesting to yourself and everybody else that watches the speculation.Collection: Life
Oh, a dainty plant is the ivy green, That creepeth o'er ruins old! Of right choice food are his meals, I ween, In his cell so lone and cold. Creeping where no life is seen, A rare old plant is the ivy green.Collection: Life
The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the God of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and in short you are for ever floored.Collection: Scene
How many young men, in all previous times of unprecedented steadiness, had turned suddenly wild and wicked for the same reason, and, in an ecstasy of unrequited love, taken to wrench off door-knockers, and invert the boxes of rheumatic watchmen!Collection: Heartbreak
I am light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboyCollection: New Year
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.Collection: Morning
From the days when it was always summer in Eden, to these days when it is mostly winter in fallen latitudes, the world of a man has invariably gone one way Charles Darnay's way the way of the love of a womanCollection: Summer
Did it ever strike you on such a morning as this that drowning would be happiness and peace?Collection: Happiness
He wore a sprinkling of powder upon his head, as if to make himself look benevolent; but if that were his purpose, he would perhaps have done better to powder his countenance also, for there was something in its very wrinkles, and in his cold restless eye, which seemed to tell of cunning that would announce itself in spite of him.Collection: Character
"Ecod, you may say what you like of my father, then, and so I give you leave," said Jonas. "I think it's liquid aggravation that circulates through his veins, and not regular blood..."Collection: Father
Newman cast a despairing glance at his small store of fuel, but, not having the courage to say no-a word which in all his life he never had said at the right time, either to himself or anyone else-gave way to the proposed arrangement.Collection: Character
The citizen ... preserved the resolute bearing of one who was not to be frowned down or daunted, and who cared very little for any nobility but that of worth and manhood.Collection: Character
"I fear your kind and open communication, which has rendered me more painfully conscious of my own defects, has not improved me," sighed Kate.Collection: Communication
You are always training yourself to be, mind and body, as clear as crystal, and you always are, and never change; whereas I am a muddy, solitary, moping weed.Collection: Weed
A new heart for a New Year, always!Collection: Inspiring
Ride on! Ride on over all obstacles and win the race.Collection: Winning
Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.Collection: Procrastination
But I am sure that I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round...as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely.Collection: Christmas