Charles Dickens

“Those venerable and feeble persons were always seen by the public in the act of bowing, and were popularly believed, when they had bowed a customer out, still to keep on bowing in the empty office until they bowed another customer in.”

“[...] Says it with his head on!" Mr. Stryver remarked upon the peculiarity as if it would have been infinitely less remarkable if he had said it with his head off.”

“Why should you particularly like a man who resembles you? There is nothing in you to like; you know that.”

“In short, I turned over on my face when I came to that, and got a good grasp on the hair, on each side of my head, and wrenched it well. All the while knowing the madness of my heart to be so very mad and misplaced that I was quite conscious it would have served my face right if I had lifted it up by my hair, and knocked it against the pebbles as a punishment for belonging to such an idiot.”

“you are lost dream of my soul..”

“Így van ez egész életünk során: legsötétebb perceinkben olyan emberek gusztusa szerint cselekszünk, akik megvetésünk tárgyai egyébként.”

“Emlékezetes napja maradt életemnek ez a nap, mert nagy változásokat okozott bennem. De ez a nap senki életéből nem hiányzik. Képzeljétek csak el, hogy egy bizonyos nap kiesett volna az életetekből, milyen másképp fordult volna minden.”

“Bless their dear little hearts!" said Mrs. Mann with emotion, "they're as well as can be, the dears! Of course, except the two that died last week.”

“The only difference between us and the professors of virtue or benevolence, or philanthropy - never mind the name - is that we know it is all meaningless, and say so, while they know it equally and will never say so.”

“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.”

“Tell the Wind and the Fire where to stop; not me.”

“what such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance.”

“The society of girls is a very delightful thing, Copperfield. It's not professional, but it's very delightful.”

“I clutched the leg of the table again immediately, and pressed it to my bosom as if it had been the companion of my youth and friend of my soul. I foresaw what was coming, and I felt that this time I really was gone.”

“My sister's bringing up had made me sensitive. In the little world in which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter. Within myself, I had sustained, from my babyhood, a perpetual conflict with injustice. I had known, from the time when I could speak, that my sister, in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me. I had cherished a profound conviction that her bringing me up by hand, gave her no right to bring me up by jerks. Through all my punishments, disgraces, fasts and vigils, and other penitential performances, I had nursed this assurance; and to my communing so much with it, in a solitary and unprotected way, I in great part refer the fact that I was morally timid and very sensitive.”

“Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.”

“These are early days, Trot, and Rome was not built in a day, nor in a year. You have chosen freely for yourself and you have chosen a very pretty and very affectionate creature. It will be your duty, and it will be your pleasure too – of course I know that; I am not delivering a lecture – to estimate her (as you chose her) by the qualities she has, and not by the qualities she may not have. The latter you must develop in her, if you can. And if you cannot, child, you must just accustom yourself to do without ‘em. But remember, my dear, your future is between you two. No one can assist you; you are to work it out for yourselves. This is marriage, Trot; and Heaven bless you both in it, for a pair of babes in the wood as you are!”

“Although to restless and ardent minds, morning may be the fitting season for exertion and activity, it is not always at that time that hope is strongest or the spirit most sanguine and buoyant.”

“If Nicholas be not always found to be blameless or agreeable, he is not always intended to appear so. He is a young man of an impetuous temper and of little or no experience; and I saw no reason why such a hero should be lifted out of nature.”

“Aye, though he loved her from his soul with such a self denying love as woman seldom wins; he spoke from first to last of Martin.”

“I was so humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry--I cannot hit upon the right name for the smart--God knows what its name was--that tears started to my eyes.”

“what I mean is, that I am under the influence of some tremendous attractionwhich I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me”

“When the time comes, let loose a tiger and a devil; but wait for the time with the tiger and the devil chained -not shown- yet always ready.”

“Judiciously show a cat, milk, if you wish her to thirst for it. Judiciously show a dog his natural prey, if you wish him to bring it down one day.”

“It is a silent, shady place, with a paved courtyard so full of echoes, that sometimes I am tempted to believe that faint responses to the noises of old times linger there yet, and that these ghosts of sound haunt my footsteps as I pace it up and down.”

“When you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you.”

“How slight a thing will disturb the equanimity of our frail minds!”

“The year was dying early, the leaves were falling fast, it was a raw cold day when we took possession, and the gloom of the house was most depressing. The cook (an amiable woman, but of a weak turn of intellect) burst into tears on beholding the kitchen, and requested that her silver watch might be delivered over to her sister (2 Tuppintock’s Gardens, Liggs’s Walk, Clapham Rise), in the event of anything happening to her from the damp. Streaker, the housemaid, feigned cheerfulness, but was the greater martyr. The Odd Girl, who had never been in the country, alone was pleased, and made arrangements for sowing an acorn in the garden outside the scullery window, and rearing an oak.”

“Whitewash on the forehead hardens the brain into a state of obstinacy, perhaps.”

“I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man.”

“All was over in a moment. I had fulfilled my destiny. I was a captive and a slave. I loved Dora Spenlow to distraction! She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don't know what she was - anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her.”

“I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other's soul, than I was in the souls of both.”

“The contention came, after all, to this - the secret was such an old one now, had so grown into me and become a part of myself, that I could not tear it away.”

“On the Rampage, Pip, and off the Rampage, Pip - such is Life!”

“Joe went all the way home with his mouth wide open, to rinse the rum out with as much air as possible.”

“A spirit that was once a man could hardly feel stranger or lonelier, going unrecognized among mankind, than I feel.”

“Morning made a considerable difference in my general prospects of Life and brightened it so much that is scarcely seemed the same.”

“I saw that the bride within the bridal dress has withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes”

“I have often thought him since, like the steam hammer, that can crush a man or pat an eggshell, in his combination of strength with gentleness”

“But these vague whisperings may arise from Mr. Snagsby's being, in his way, rather a meditative and poetical man; loving to walk in Staple Inn in the summer time; and to observe how countrified the sparrows and the leaves are... and to remark (if in good spirits) that there were old times once, and that you'd find a stone coffin or two, now, under that chapel, he'd be bound, if you was to dig for it.”

“Mrs General had no opinions. Her way of forming a mind was to prevent it from forming opinions. She had a little circular set of mental grooves or rails on which she started little trains of other people's opinions, which never overtook one another, and never got anywhere.”

“The master of this shop was sitting at the door in his shirt-sleeves, smoking; and as there were a great many coats and pairs of trousers dangling from the low ceiling, and only two feeble candles burning inside to show what they were, I fancied that he looked like a man of a revengeful disposition, who had hung all his enemies, and was enjoying himself.”

“For a long time, Oliver remained motionless in this attitude. The candle was burning low in the socket when he rose to his feet. Having gazed cautiously round him, and listened intently, he gently undid the fastenings of the door, and looked abroad.”

“So wicked do destruction and secrecy appear to honest minds, that Mr Lorry and Miss Pross, while engaged in the commission of their deed and in the removal of its traces, almost felt, and almost looked, like accomplices in a horrible crime.”

“...the one woman who had stood conspicuous, knitting, still knitted on with the steadfastness of Fate.”

“has that Copperfield no tague! I would do a good deal for you, if you tell me, without lying that somebody had cut it out”

“Least said, soonest mended”

“what wind blows you here? nit an ill wind, I hope”

“I know enough of the world now to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything”

“I'm a straw upon the surface of the deep, and am tossed in all directions by the elephants”