Charles Dickens

“I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out...”

“The last trumpet ever to be sounded shall blow even algebra to wreck.”

“Joe gave me some more gravy.”

“God bless us, every one!”

“There is a man who would give his life to keep a life you love beside you.”

“I only know that it was, and ceased to be; and that I have written, and there I leave it.”

“Can I view thee panting, lyingOn thy stomach, without sighing;Can I unmoved see thee dyingOn a logExpiring frog!”

“Never say never”

“Your haughty religious people would have held their heads up to see me as I am tonight, and preached of flames and vengeance,' cried the girl. 'Oh, dear lady, why ar'n't those who claim to be God's own folks as gentle and as kind to us poor wretches as you, who, having youth, and beauty, and all that they have lost, might be a little proud instead of so much humbler?”

“Bless me, yes. There he is. He was very much attached to me, was Dick. Poor Dick! Dear, dear!”

“She forgot to be shy at the moment, in honestly warning him awayfrom the sunken wreck he had a dream of raising; and looked at himwith eyes which assuredly, in association with her patient face,her fragile figure, her spare dress, and the wind and rain, did notturn him from his purpose of helping her.”

“A commission of haberdashers could alone have reported whatthe rest of her poor dress was made of, but it had a strong generalresemblance to seaweed, with here and there a gigantic tea-leaf.Her shawl looked particularly like a tea-leaf after long infusion.”

“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?”

“There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth.”

“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.”

“Bah," said Scrooge, "Humbug.”

“Buried how long?”The answer was always the same: “Almost eighteen years.”You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?”Long ago.”You know that you are recalled to life?”They tell me so.”I hope that you care to live?”I can’t say.”Shall I show her to you? Will you come and see her?”The answers to this question were various and contradictory. Sometimes the broken reply was, “Wait! It would kill me if I saw her too soon.” Sometimes it was given in a tender rain of tears, and then it was, “Take me to her.” Sometimes it was staring and bewildered, and then it was, “I don’t know her. I don’t understand.”After such imaginary discourse, the passenger in his fancy would dig, and dig, dig – to dig this wretched creature out. Got out at last, with earth hanging about his face and hair, he would suddenly fall away to dust. The passenger would then start to himself, and lower the window, to get the reality of mist and rain on his cheek.Yet even when his eyes were opened on the mist and rain, on the moving patch of light from the lamps, and the hedge of the roadside retreating by jerks, the night shadows outside the coach would fall into the train of night shadows within. Out of the midst in them, a ghostly face would rise, and he would accost it again.Buried how long?”Almost eighteen years.”I hope you care to live?”I can’t say.”Dig – dig – dig – until an impatient movement from one of the two passengers would admonish him to pull up the window, draw his arm securely through the leather strap, and speculate on the two slumbering life forms, until his mind lost hold of them, and they again slid away into the bank and the grave.Buried how long?”Almost eighteen years.”You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?”Long ago.”The words were still in his hearing just as spoken – distinctly in his hearing as ever spoken words had been in his life – when the weary passenger started to the consciousness of daylight, and found that the shadows of night were gone.”

“Herbert received me with open arms, and I had never felt before so blessedly what it is to have a friend. When he had spoken some sound words of sympathy and encouragement, we sat down to consider the question, What was to be done?”

“Spring is the time of year when it is summer in the sun and winter in the shade.”

“Mr. Tracy Tupman—the too susceptible Tupman, who to the wisdom and experience of maturer years superadded the enthusiasm and ardour of a boy in the most interesting and pardonable of human weaknesses—love.”

“Then idiots talk....of Energy. If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that I abominate, it is energy. It is such a conventional superstition, such parrot gabble! What the deuce!....But show me a good opportunity, show me something really worth being energetic about, and I'll show you energy.”

“There was once a king, and he had a queen; and he was the manliest of his gender, and she was the loveliest of hers. They had nineteen children, and were always having more.”

“Come in, -- come in! and know me better, man! I am the Ghost of Christmas Present. Look upon me! You have never seen the like of me before!”

“A kind and generous man by nature, he had stumbled, by chance, over that common Philosopher`s stone (much more easily discovered than the object of the alchemist`s researches), which sometimes trips up kind and generous men, and has the fatal property of turning gold to dross and every precious thing to poor account.”

“Christmas is a time in which, of all times in the year, the memory of every remediable sorrow, wrong, and trouble in the world around us, should be active with us, not less than our own experiences, for all good.”

“Every man thinks his own geese swans.”

“Everybody said so.Far be it from me to assert that what everybody says must be true. Everybody is, often, as likely to be wrong as right. In the general experience, everybody has been wrong so often, and it has taken in most instances such a weary while to find out how wrong, that the authority is proved to be fallible. Everybody may sometimes be right; "but that's no rule," as the ghost of Giles Scroggins says in the ballad.”

“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!”

“It's in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.”

“it is a principle of his that no man who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true gentleman in manner. He says, no varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.”

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.”

“At last, however, he began to think -- as you or I would have thought at first; for it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too . . .”

“Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.”

“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.”

“Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to shake very much; and shaving requires attention, even when you don't dance while you are at it.But if he had cut the end of his nose off, he would have put a piece of sticking-plaster over it, and been quite satisfied.”

“I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.”

“The great grindstone, Earth, had turned when Mr. Lorry looked out again, and the sun was red on the courtyard. But, the lesser grindstone stood alone there in the calm morning air, with red upon it that the sun had never give, and would never take away.”

“I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making explanation for itself and wearing it out. ”

“We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down, Trot!”

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

“a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places and not quite so loose in others.”

“[She wasn't] a logically reasoning woman, but God is good, and hearts may count in heaven as high as heads.”

“You cannot stain a black coat”

“Then tell Wind and Fire where to stop," returned madame; "but don't tell me.”

“And therefore, Uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that [Christmas] has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

“Here my sister, after a fit of clappings and screamings, beat her hands upon her bosom and upon her knees, and threw her cap off, and pulled her hair down - which were the last stages on her road to frenzy. Being by this time a perfect fury and a complete success, she made a dash to the door”

“In seasons of pestilence, some of us will have a secret attraction to the disease--a terrible passing inclination to die of it.”

“And you, being a good man, can pass it as such, and forgive and pity the dreamer, and be lenient and encouraging when he wakes?" --Rick"Indeed I can. What am I but another dreamer, Rick?" --Guardian”

“You do not know what all around you see in Esther Summerson, how many hearts she touches and awakens, what sacred admiration and what love she wins. --Mr. Woodcourt”

“It's very soon done, sir, isn't it?' inquired Mr. Folair of the collector, leaning over the table to address him.What is soon done, sir?' returned Mr. Lillyvick.The tying up, the fixing oneself with a wife,' replied Mr. Folair. 'It don't take long, does it?'No, sir,' replied Mr. Lillyvick, colouring. 'It does not take long. And what then, sir?'Oh! nothing,' said the actor. 'It don't take a man long to hang himself, either, eh? Ha, ha!”