250 Charles Dickens Quotes: Timeless Wisdom from His Greatest Novels

Whether you are looking for a line about hope in hard times, a sharp observation on human nature, or simply the most beautiful sentences ever written in English, you will find them here. Every quote below is a genuine line from Dickens’ own pen, presented with the work it comes from.

A Christmas Carol Classics

1. Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. — Charles Dickens
2. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. — Charles Dickens
3. Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. — Charles Dickens
4. “Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug!” — Charles Dickens
5. “Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.” — Charles Dickens
6. “If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!” — Charles Dickens
7. I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round — apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that — 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, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. — Charles Dickens
8. “Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge. “Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again. “And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?” — Charles Dickens
9. “If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” — Charles Dickens
10. “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!” — Charles Dickens
11. “It is required of every man,” the Ghost returned, “that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death.” — Charles Dickens
12. “I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.” — Charles Dickens
13. “Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!” — Charles Dickens
14. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune. — Charles Dickens
15. “You fear the world too much,” she answered, gently. “All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you.” — Charles Dickens
16. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. — Charles Dickens
17. “There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned the Spirit, “who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived.” — Charles Dickens
18. “God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim, the last of all. — Charles Dickens
19. “If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” — Charles Dickens
20. “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?” — Charles Dickens
21. It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humor. — Charles Dickens
22. “Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me.” — Charles Dickens
23. “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!” — Charles Dickens
24. 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. — Charles Dickens
25. Reflect upon your present blessings — of which every man has many — not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some. — Charles Dickens
26. No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused. — Charles Dickens
27. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! — Charles Dickens
28. And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. — Charles Dickens
29. Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more. — Charles Dickens
30. I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. — Charles Dickens
31. External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. — Charles Dickens
32. In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. — Charles Dickens
33. I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest license of a child, and yet to have been man enough to know its value. — Charles Dickens
34. “I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,” said the Spirit. “Look upon me!” — Charles Dickens
35. The bed was his own, the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in! — Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities

1. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. — Charles Dickens
2. Recalled to life. — Charles Dickens
3. A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. — Charles Dickens
4. France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. — Charles Dickens
5. BLOOD. The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there. — Charles Dickens
6. Death is Nature’s remedy for all things, and why not Legislation’s? — Charles Dickens
7. Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. — Charles Dickens
8. Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away. — Charles Dickens
9. I am a disappointed drudge, sir. I care for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for me. — Charles Dickens
10. For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. — Charles Dickens
11. Think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you. — Charles Dickens
12. You have been the last dream of my soul. — Charles Dickens
13. 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. — Charles Dickens
14. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out. — Charles Dickens
15. Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; — the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine! — Charles Dickens
16. Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. — Charles Dickens
17. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind. — Charles Dickens
18. The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance upon Monseigneur. — Charles Dickens
19. A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty is worth a whole eternity in bondage. — Charles Dickens
20. These are mere business relations, miss; there is no friendship in them, no particular interest, nothing like sentiment. I have no feelings; I am a mere machine. — Charles Dickens
21. The sea did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction. It thundered at the town, and thundered at the cliffs, and brought the coast down, madly. — Charles Dickens
22. Feelings! I have no time for them, no chance of them. I pass my whole life, miss, in turning an immense pecuniary Mangle. — Charles Dickens
23. A matter of business. Regard it as a matter of business — business that must be done. — Charles Dickens
24. All the devouring and insatiate monsters imagined since imagination could record itself, are fused in the one realisation, Guillotine. — Charles Dickens
25. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. — Charles Dickens
26. Six tumbrils roll along the streets. Change these back again to what they were, thou powerful enchanter, Time, and they shall be seen to be the carriages of absolute monarchs. — Charles Dickens
27. Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. — Charles Dickens
28. I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. — Charles Dickens
29. I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. — Charles Dickens
30. Keep where you are because, if I should make a mistake, it could never be set right in your lifetime. — Charles Dickens

Great Expectations

1. My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip. — Charles Dickens
2. Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. — Charles Dickens
3. A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. — Charles Dickens
4. “Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!” — Charles Dickens
5. “You get me a file.” “And you get me wittles.” — Charles Dickens
6. Ask no questions, and you’ll be told no lies. — Charles Dickens
7. Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than the dirt itself. — Charles Dickens
8. 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. — Charles Dickens
9. That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day. — Charles Dickens
10. My guiding star always is, Get hold of portable property. — Charles Dickens
11. Throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people we most despise. — Charles Dickens
12. “Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together, as I may say, and one man’s a blacksmith, and one’s a whitesmith, and one’s a goldsmith, and one’s a coppersmith. Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come.” — Charles Dickens
13. Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule. — Charles Dickens
14. You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, in every prospect I have ever seen. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. — Charles Dickens
15. I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. — Charles Dickens
16. In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong. — Charles Dickens
17. Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. — Charles Dickens
18. “Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but — I hope — into a better shape.” — Charles Dickens
19. I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her. — Charles Dickens
20. “Which dear old Pip, old chap,” said Joe, “you and me was ever friends. And when you’re well enough to go out for a ride — what larks!” — Charles Dickens
21. I never had one hour’s happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death. — Charles Dickens
22. “Now, I ain’t alone, as you may think I am. There’s a young man hid with me, in comparison with which young man I am a angel.” — Charles Dickens
23. All the truth of my position came flashing on me; and its disappointments, dangers, disgraces, consequences of all kinds, rushed in in such a multitude that I was borne down by them and had to struggle for every breath I drew. — Charles Dickens
24. “Play, play, play!” — Charles Dickens
25. “Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces — and as it gets older and stronger, it will tear deeper — love her, love her, love her!” — Charles Dickens
26. “The office is one thing, and private life is another.” — Charles Dickens
27. “I am what you have made me. Take all the praise, take all the blame; take all the success, take all the failure; in short, take me.” — Charles Dickens
28. “O God bless you, God forgive you!” — Charles Dickens
29. “But, in this separation, I associate you only with the good; and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm.” — Charles Dickens
30. “So new to him,” she muttered, “so old to me; so strange to him, so familiar to me; so melancholy to both of us!” — Charles Dickens

David Copperfield

1. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. — Charles Dickens
2. I was born with a caul, which was advertised for sale, in the newspapers, at the low price of fifteen guineas. — Charles Dickens
3. You’ll find us rough, sir, but you’ll find us ready. — Charles Dickens
4. Ye-es. Barkis is willin’. — Charles Dickens
5. I live on broken wittles — and I sleep on the coals. — Charles Dickens
6. A loving heart was better and stronger than wisdom. — Charles Dickens
7. “David,” said Mr. Murdstone, “to the young this is a world for action; not for moping and droning in.” — Charles Dickens
8. “My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!” — Charles Dickens
9. “My other piece of advice, Copperfield,” said Mr. Micawber, “you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” — Charles Dickens
10. I never will desert Mr. Micawber. — Charles Dickens
11. It’s a mad world. Mad as Bedlam, boy! — Charles Dickens
12. I am a lone lorn creetur… and everythink goes contrairy with me. — Charles Dickens
13. I’d better go into the house, and die and be a riddance! — Charles Dickens
14. “Never,” said my aunt, “be mean in anything; never be false; never be cruel. Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of you.” — Charles Dickens
15. I am well aware that I am the umblest person going. My mother is likewise a very umble person. — Charles Dickens
16. I only ask for information. — Charles Dickens
17. “It was as true,” said Mr. Barkis, “as turnips is. It was as true,” said Mr. Barkis, “as taxes is. And nothing’s truer than them.” — Charles Dickens
18. I find my breath gets short, but it seldom gets longer as a man gets older. I take it as it comes, and make the most of it. — Charles Dickens
19. What a world of gammon and spinach it is, though, ain’t it! — Charles Dickens
20. He is quite a good fellow — nobody’s enemy but his own. — Charles Dickens
21. Other things are all very well in their way, but give me Blood! — Charles Dickens
22. Accidents will occur in the best regulated families; and in families not regulated by that pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances the — a — I would say, in short, by the influence of Woman, in the lofty character of Wife, they may be expected with confidence, and must be borne with philosophy. — Charles Dickens
23. 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! — Charles Dickens
24. A long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull altogether, my hearties, hurrah! — Charles Dickens
25. I ate umble pie with an appetite. — Charles Dickens
26. Let sleeping dogs lie — who wants to rouse ’em? — Charles Dickens
27. 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. — Charles Dickens
28. My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest. — Charles Dickens
29. Britannia, that unfortunate female, is always before me, like a trussed fowl: skewered through and through with office-pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape. — Charles Dickens
30. It’s only my child-wife! — Charles Dickens
31. There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose. — Charles Dickens
32. A man must take the fat with the lean. — Charles Dickens
33. Trifles make the sum of life. — Charles Dickens
34. “The labour is so pleasant,” said Agnes, “that it is scarcely grateful in me to call it by that name.” — Charles Dickens
35. We all have some experience of a feeling, that comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before, in a remote time — of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects, and circumstances. — Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist

1. The fact is, that there was considerable difficulty in inducing Oliver to take upon himself the office of respiration, — a troublesome practice, but one which custom has rendered necessary to our easy existence. — Charles Dickens
2. “Please, sir, I want some more.” — Charles Dickens
3. Oliver Twist has asked for more! — Charles Dickens
4. “Come,” said Mr. Bumble, “come, Oliver! Wipe your eyes with the cuffs of your jacket, and don’t cry into your gruel; that’s a very foolish action, Oliver.” — Charles Dickens
5. It was a nice sickly season just at this time. In commercial phrase, coffins were looking up. — Charles Dickens
6. “I am very hungry and tired,” replied Oliver: the tears standing in his eyes as he spoke. “I have walked a long way. I have been walking these seven days.” — Charles Dickens
7. What a fine thing capital punishment is! Dead men never repent; dead men never bring awkward stories to light. — Charles Dickens
8. Although Oliver had been brought up by philosophers, he was not theoretically acquainted with the beautiful axiom that self-preservation is the first law of nature. — Charles Dickens
9. There is a passion for hunting something deeply implanted in the human breast. — Charles Dickens
10. I only know two sorts of boys. Mealy boys, and beef-faced boys. — Charles Dickens
11. “Give it here, you avaricious old skeleton, give it here!” — Charles Dickens
12. But death, fires, and burglary, make all men equals… — Charles Dickens
13. “It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper,” said Mr. Bumble. “So cry away.” — Charles Dickens
14. Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine. — Charles Dickens
15. “If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble, “the law is a ass — a idiot.” — Charles Dickens
16. There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts. — Charles Dickens
17. The sun — the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man — burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant glory. — Charles Dickens
18. Oliver cried lustily. If he could have known that he was an orphan, left to the tender mercies of church-wardens and overseers, perhaps he would have cried the louder. — Charles Dickens
19. For the next eight or ten months, Oliver was the victim of a systematic course of treachery and deception. He was brought up by hand. — Charles Dickens
20. What an excellent example of the power of dress, young Oliver Twist was! — Charles Dickens

Bleak House

1. London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth. — Charles Dickens
2. Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. — Charles Dickens
3. Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means. — Charles Dickens
4. This is the Court of Chancery, which has its decaying houses and its blighted lands in every shire, which has its worn-out lunatic in every madhouse and its dead in every churchyard, which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope, so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart, that there is not an honourable man among its practitioners who would not give — who does not often give — the warning, “Suffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come here!” — Charles Dickens
5. It is not a large world. But the evil of it is that it is a world wrapped up in too much jeweller’s cotton and fine wool, and cannot hear the rushing of the larger worlds, and cannot see them as they circle round the sun. — Charles Dickens
6. He is a gentleman of strict conscience, disdainful of all littleness and meanness and ready on the shortest notice to die any death you may please to mention rather than give occasion for the least impeachment of his integrity. — Charles Dickens
7. “I asked him whether there was a great fire anywhere? For the streets were so full of dense brown smoke that scarcely anything was to be seen. “Oh, dear no, miss,” he said. “This is a London particular.”” — Charles Dickens
8. “She means well,” said Mr. Jarndyce hastily. “The wind’s in the east.” — Charles Dickens
9. It is said that the children of the very poor are not brought up, but dragged up. — Charles Dickens
10. “I don’t feel any vulgar gratitude to you. I almost feel as if you ought to be grateful to me for giving you the opportunity of enjoying the luxury of generosity.” — Charles Dickens
11. “I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies!” — Charles Dickens
12. He had a cane, he had an eye-glass, he had a snuff-box, he had rings, he had wristbands, he had everything but any touch of nature; he was not like youth, he was not like age, he was not like anything in the world but a model of deportment. — Charles Dickens
13. “What is peace? Is it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely, and gentle, and beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? Oh, yes!” — Charles Dickens
14. “It’s my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.” — Charles Dickens
15. It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations. — Charles Dickens
16. “Never have a mission, my dear child.” — Charles Dickens
17. “Take care, while you are young, that you can think in those days, ‘I never whitened a hair of her dear head — I never marked a sorrowful line in her face!'” — Charles Dickens
18. The one great principle of the English law is to make business for itself. — Charles Dickens
19. “My experience teaches me, Lady Dedlock, that most of the people I know would do far better to leave marriage alone.” — Charles Dickens
20. Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, right reverends and wrong reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day. — Charles Dickens
21. “Your sex have such a surprising animosity against one another when you do differ.” — Charles Dickens
22. We are not rich in the bank, but we have always prospered, and we have quite enough. I never walk out with my husband but I hear the people bless him. Is not this to be rich? — Charles Dickens
23. What connexion can there be, between the place in Lincolnshire, the house in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabout of Jo the outlaw with the broom, who had that distant ray of light upon him when he swept the churchyard-step, but the connexion of dust? — Charles Dickens
24. The universe, he observed, makes rather an indifferent parent, I am afraid. — Charles Dickens
25. I had never heard of such a thing. “A fog, miss,” said the young gentleman. “Oh, indeed!” said I. — Charles Dickens

Nicholas Nickleby

1. Gold conjures up a mist about a man, more destructive of all his old senses and lulling to his feelings than the fumes of charcoal. — Charles Dickens
2. The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again. — Charles Dickens
3. He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favor of two. — Charles Dickens
4. Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human nature. — Charles Dickens
5. There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk. — Charles Dickens
6. Of all fruitless errands, sending a tear to look after a day that is gone is the most fruitless. — Charles Dickens
7. Miss Knag still aimed at youth, although she had shot beyond it, years ago. — Charles Dickens
8. May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs? — Charles Dickens
9. 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. — Charles Dickens
10. One of the many to whom, from straightened circumstances, a consequent inability to form the associations they would wish, and a disinclination to mix with the society they could obtain, London is as complete a solitude as the plains of Syria. — Charles Dickens
11. For nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy, that we can scarcely mark their progress. — Charles Dickens
12. Formalities, formalities, must not be neglected in civilized society. — Charles Dickens
13. Wine in; truth out. — Charles Dickens
14. Although a skilful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you can keep him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people. — Charles Dickens
15. It is a hopeless endeavour to attract people to a theatre unless they can be first brought to believe that they will never get in. — Charles Dickens
16. There was a christening party at the largest coffin-maker’s, and a funeral hatchment had stopped some great improvements in the bravest mansion. Life and death went hand in hand; wealth and poverty stood side by side; repletion and starvation laid them down together. — Charles Dickens
17. 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. — Charles Dickens
18. Mystery and disappointment are not absolutely indispensable to the growth of love, but they are very often its powerful auxiliaries. — Charles Dickens
19. Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues — faith and hope. — Charles Dickens
20. There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets. — Charles Dickens

The Pickwick Papers

1. He had used the word in its Pickwickian sense. — Charles Dickens
2. Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire. — Charles Dickens
3. “I am ruminating,” said Mr. Pickwick, “on the strange mutability of human affairs.” — Charles Dickens
4. Kent, sir — everybody knows Kent — apples, cherries, hops, and women. — Charles Dickens
5. There are very few moments in a man’s existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat. — Charles Dickens
6. There was a fine gentle wind, and Mr. Pickwick’s hat rolled sportively before it. The wind puffed, and Mr. Pickwick puffed, and the hat rolled over and over as merrily as a lively porpoise in a strong tide. — Charles Dickens
7. Did it ever strike you, on such a morning as this, that drowning would be happiness and peace? — Charles Dickens
8. “It wasn’t the wine,” murmured Mr. Snodgrass, in a broken voice. “It was the salmon.” — Charles Dickens
9. I wants to make your flesh creep. — Charles Dickens
10. “It’s always best on these occasions to do what the mob do.” “But suppose there are two mobs?” suggested Mr. Snodgrass. “Shout with the largest,” replied Mr. Pickwick. — Charles Dickens
11. There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast. — Charles Dickens
12. When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people. — Charles Dickens
13. Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fireside and his quiet home! — Charles Dickens
14. Poetry’s unnat’ral; no man ever talked poetry ‘cept a beadle on Boxin’-Day, or Warren’s blackin’, or Rowland’s oil, or some of them low fellows. — Charles Dickens
15. It’s over, and can’t be helped, and that’s one consolation, as they always says in Turkey, ven they cuts the wrong man’s head off. — Charles Dickens
16. “It’s a wery remarkable circumstance, Sir,” said Sam, “that poverty and oysters seems to go together.” — Charles Dickens
17. Take example by your father, my boy, and be very careful o’ widders all your life, specially if they’ve kept a public house, Sammy. — Charles Dickens
18. I took a good deal o’ pains with his eddication, sir; let him run in the streets when he was wery young, and shift for his-self. It’s the only way to make a boy sharp, sir. — Charles Dickens
19. “Think, Sir!” replied Mr. Weller; “why, I think he’s the wictim o’ connubiality, as Blue Beard’s domestic chaplain said, vith a tear of pity, ven he buried him.” — Charles Dickens
20. Battledore and shuttlecock’s a wery good game, vhen you ain’t the shuttlecock and two lawyers the battledores, in which case it gets too excitin’ to be pleasant. — Charles Dickens
21. Mr. Weller’s knowledge of London was extensive and peculiar. — Charles Dickens
22. Ven you’re a married man, Samivel, you’ll understand a good many things as you don’t understand now; but vether it’s worth goin’ through so much, to learn so little, as the charity-boy said ven he got to the end of the alphabet, is a matter o’ taste. — Charles Dickens
23. Dumb as a drum vith a hole in it, Sir. — Charles Dickens
24. Keep yourself TO yourself. — Charles Dickens
25. Never mind the character, and stick to the alleybi. — Charles Dickens
26. It’s my opinion, sir, that this meeting is drunk, sir. — Charles Dickens
27. “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,” replied Sam. — Charles Dickens
28. By the bye, who ever knew a man who never read or wrote either, who hadn’t got some small back parlour which he WOULD call a study! — Charles Dickens
29. Miss Bolo rose from the table considerably agitated, and went straight home, in a flood of tears and a sedan-chair. — Charles Dickens
30. She knows wot’s wot, she does. — Charles Dickens

More Dickens Wisdom

1. Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. — Charles Dickens
2. There is a wisdom of the Head, and there is a wisdom of the Heart. — Charles Dickens
3. It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. — Charles Dickens
4. Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess! — Charles Dickens
5. The bearings of this observation lays in the application of it. — Charles Dickens
6. When found, make a note of. — Charles Dickens
7. The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in, and the sun and moon were made to give them light. — Charles Dickens
8. The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. — Charles Dickens
9. A person who can’t pay, gets another person who can’t pay, to guarantee that he can pay. — Charles Dickens
10. “And if it’s proud to have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts,” Miss Jenny struck in, flushed, “she is proud.” — Charles Dickens
11. The sun himself is weak when he first rises, and gathers strength and courage as the day gets on. — Charles Dickens
12. If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers. — Charles Dickens
13. Rich folks may ride on camels, but it ain’t so easy for ’em to see out of a needle’s eye. — Charles Dickens
14. Moths, and all sorts of ugly creatures, hover about a lighted candle. Can the candle help it? — Charles Dickens
15. 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. — Charles Dickens
16. What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life, by him who interests his heart in everything. — Charles Dickens
17. No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else. — Charles Dickens
18. I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. — Charles Dickens
19. Resisting the slow touch of a frozen finger tracing out my spine. — Charles Dickens
20. 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. — Charles Dickens
21. O let us love our occupations, Bless the squire and his relations, Live upon our daily rations, And always know our proper stations. — Charles Dickens
22. The dignity of his office is never impaired by the absence of efforts on his part to maintain it. — Charles Dickens
23. Mr. Augustus Minns was a bachelor, of about forty as he said — of about eight-and-forty as his friends said. — Charles Dickens
24. It was a good thing to have a couple of thousand people all rigid and frozen together, in the palm of one’s hand. — Charles Dickens
25. I put a New Testament among your books, for the very same reasons, and with the very same hopes that made me write an easy account of it for you, when you were a little child; because it is the best book that ever was or will be known in the world. — Charles Dickens

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Charles Dickens’ most famous quote?

His most famous line is the opening of A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Other contenders include “God bless us, every one!” from A Christmas Carol and “Please, sir, I want some more.” from Oliver Twist.

What did Charles Dickens say about Christmas?

Dickens defined Christmas for the modern world through A Christmas Carol. His best Christmas lines include “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year” and Tiny Tim’s “God bless us, every one!”

Which Charles Dickens book should I read first?

Start with A Christmas Carol — it is short, moving, and contains his most beloved lines. Then try Great Expectations for his greatest novel, or A Tale of Two Cities for history and sacrifice.

Did Charles Dickens really say “A loving heart is the truest wisdom”?

The exact line in David Copperfield reads “A loving heart was better and stronger than wisdom.” The shorter popular form is a paraphrase of Dickens’ own words that has circulated for over a century.

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