Quotes from Charles Dickens

Ride on! Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on! Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!

Every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.

I am at the moment deaf in the ears, hoarse in the throat, red in the nose, green in the gills, damp in the eyes, twitchy in the joints and fractious in temper from a most intolerable and oppressive cold.

It was as true… as turnips is. It was as true… as taxes is. And nothing's truer than them.

It is not easy to walk alone in the country without musing upon something.

In came a fiddler… and tuned like fifty stomachaches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile.

"Are you in pain, dear mother?" "I think there's a pain somewhere in the room," said Mrs. Gradgrind, "but I couldn't positively say that I have got it."

We must scrunch or be scrunched.

I want to be something so much worthier than the doll in the doll's house.

That vague kind of penitence which holidays awaken next morning.

The clouds were drifting over the moon at their giddiest speed, at one time wholly obscuring her, at another, suffering her to burst forth in full splendor and shed her light on all the objects around; anon, driving over her again, with increased velocity, and shrouding everything in darkness.

Keep up appearances whatever you do.

Come, let's be a comfortable couple and take care of each other! How glad we shall be, that we have somebody we are fond of always, to talk to and sit with.

A man must take the fat with the lean.

Poetry's unnat'ral; no man ever talked poetry 'cept a beadle on Boxin' Day.

Long before we saw the sea, its spray was on our lips, and showered salt rain upon us.

"The artful Dodger."

All is gas and gaiters.

Let sleeping dogs lie—who wants to rouse 'em?

Skewered through and through with office pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape.

She's the ornament of her sex.

"It wasn't the wine," murmured Mr. Snodgrass, in a broken voice. "It was the salmon."

Oh let us love our occupations,Bless the squire and his relations,Live upon our daily rations,And always know our proper stations.

[I]t seemed as if the streets were absorbed by the sky, and the night were all in the air.