A boy's story is the best that is ever told.
A day wasted on others is not wasted on one's self.
A lady of what is commonly called an uncertain temper - a phrase which being interpreted signifies a temper tolerably certain to make everybody more or less uncomfortable.
A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
A person who can't pay gets another person who can't pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don't make either of them able to do a walking-match.
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.
Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you have him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.
An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness.
Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he's well dressed. There ain't much credit in that.
Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.
Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.
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.
Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.
Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows - and china.
Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay.
Credit is a system whereby a person who can't pay gets another person who can't pay to guarantee that he can pay.
Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.
Do you spell it with a "V" or a "W"?' inquired the judge. 'That depends upon the taste and fancy of the speller, my Lord'.
Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.
Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.
Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.
Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!
Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.
He had but one eye and the pocket of prejudice runs in favor of two.
He would make a lovely corpse.
Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.
I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.
I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.
I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.
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.
I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.
If you could see my legs when I take my boots off, you'd form some idea of what unrequited affection is.
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 is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.
It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.
It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.
It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away.
It was a good thing to have a couple of thousand people all rigid and frozen together, in the palm of one's hand.
It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
It's my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.
Keep up appearances whatever you do.
Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.
Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.
May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?
Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions.
Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.
No one is useless in the world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else.
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.
Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are!
Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.
Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many - not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes of which all men have some.
Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.
Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.
Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.
Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature.
That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity's small change in general society.
The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.
The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.
The first rule of business is: Do other men for they would do you.
The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother.
The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.
The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.
The sergeant was describing a military life. It was all drinking, he said, except that there were frequent intervals of eating and love making.
The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.
There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.
There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.
There are not a few among the disciples of charity who require, in their vocation, scarcely less excitement than the votaries of pleasure in theirs.
There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.
There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.
There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.
There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.
There might be some credit in being jolly.
This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in.
'Tis love that makes the world go round, my baby.
To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.
Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!
We are so very 'umble.
We forge the chains we wear in life.
We know, Mr. Weller - we, who are men of the world - that a good uniform must work its way with the women, sooner or later.
Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.
When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.
With affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.
You don't carry in your countenance a letter of recommendation.
His last child was born in 1852, Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens. Dickens named his seventh son after his friend, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who served as the child's godfather. Bulwer-Lytton was a politician and novelist, though not nearly as respected as Dickens is today. The first line of his novel Paul Clifford contains the oft-mocked line "It was a dark and stormy night."
When he was five, his family moved to Chatham, in Kent county in southeastern England.
His parents were John Dickens and Elizabeth (Barrow) Dickens.
During his 1842 trip to Canada and the United States, Dickens advocated international copyright (to combat the numerous American pirated versions of his works) and an end to slavery.
He visited Canada and the United States in 1842. He wrote about the trip in American Notes, a book which was poorly received in America.
The Old Curiosity Shop is located on Portsmouth Street in London. The small building includes the sign "The Old Curiosity Shop immortalised by Charles Dickens." It trades in antique and modern art.
Most of Charles Dickens' novels were originally published in a monthly serial format. It was only later that they were released in book form.
He was fascinated by the idea of a hidden aristocratic lineage, such as that discovered for the title character of Oliver Twist. It is thought that he was so ashamed of his family history that he longed for such a background for himself.
His pen name was "Boz."
Novel: Oliver Twist published in 1837.
Charles is buried at Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner.
Charles' great-granddaughter, Monica Dickens, was also a published writer.
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