“Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human natur.”

“My dear if you could give me a cup of tea to clear my muddle of a head I should better understand your affairs.”

“Oh indeed! Our and the Wilfers' Mutual Friend, my dear.”

“And now, as I close my task, subduing my desire to linger yet, these faces fade away. But one face, shining on me like a Heavenly light by which I see all other objects, is above them and beyond them all. And that remains.I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful serenity, beside me.My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night; but the dear presence, without which I were nothing, bears me company.O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward!”

“Dear Sir, I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your obliging letter, and to assure you that my time and attention are far too much occupied, to admit of my having the pleasure you propose to me.Faithfully YoursCharles DickensThe Letters of Charles DickensThe Pilgrim EditionVolume 9: 1859-1861”

“I love your daughter fondly, dearly, disninterestedly, devotedly. If ever there were love in the world, I love her.”

“In truth she is not a hard lady naturally, and the time has been when the sight of the venerable figure suing to her with such strong earnestness would have moved her to great compassion. But so long accustomed to suppress emotion and keep down reality, so long schooled for her own purposes in that destructive school which shuts up the natural feelings of the heart like flies in amber and spreads one uniform and dreary gloss over the good and bad, the feeling and the unfeeling, the sensible and the senseless, she had subdued even her wonder until now.”