“How could you give me life, and take from me all the inappreciable things that raise it from the state of conscious death? Where are the graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart? What have you done, oh, Father, What have you done with the garden that should have bloomed once, in this great wilderness here? Said louisa as she touched her heart.”

“You have been so careful of me that I never had a child's heart. You have trained me so well that I never dreamed a child's dream. You have dealt so wisely with me, Father ,from my cradle to this hour, that I never had a child's belief or a child's fear.Mr. Gradgrind was quite moved by his success, and by this testimony to it. " My dear Louisa," said he, you abundantly repay my care. Kiss me, my dear girl.”

“You must know,’ said Estella, condescending to me as a beautiful and brilliant woman might, ‘that I have no heart—if that has anything to do with my memory.’ I got through some jargon to the effect that I took the liberty of doubting that. That I knew better. That there could be no such beauty without it. ‘Oh! I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt,’ said Estella, ‘and, of course, if it ceased to beat I should cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no—sympathy—sentiment—nonsense.’ … ‘I am serious,’ said Estella, not so much with a frown (for her brow was smooth) as with a darkening of her face; ‘If we are to be thrown much together, you had better believe it at once. No!’ imperiously stopping me as I opened my lips. ‘I have not bestowed my tenderness anywhere. I have never had any such thing.”

“My heart is set, as firmly as ever heart of man was set on woman. I have no thought, no view, no hope, in life beyond her; and if you oppose me in this great stake, you take my peace and happiness in your hands, and cast them to the wind.”

“I begin to think,' said Estella, in a musing way, after another moment of calm wonder, 'that I almost understand how this comes about. If you had brought up your adopted daughter wholly in the dark confinement of these rooms, and had never let her know that there was such a thing as the daylight by which she has never once seen your face―if you had done that, and then, for a purpose, had wanted her to understand the daylight and know all about it, you would have been disappointed and angry? . . .'Or,' said Estella, '―which is a nearer case―if you had taught her, from the dawn of her intelligence, with your utmost energy and might, that there was such a thing as daylight, but that it was made to be her enemy and destroyer, and she must always turn against it, for it had blighted you and would else blight her―if you had done this, and then, for a purpose, had wanted her to take naturally to the daylight and she could not do it, you would have been disappointed and angry? . . .'So,' said Estella, 'I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.”

“I was very glad afterwards to have had the interview; for, in her face and in her voice, and in her touch, she gave me the assurance, that suffering had been stronger than Miss Havisham's teaching, and had given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be.”

“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?”