He did each single thing as if he did nothing else

I believe no satirist could breathe this air. If another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among us tomorrow, he would be hunted down. If you have any knowledge of our literature, and can give...

We forge the chains we wear in life.

And here you see me working out, as cheerfully and thankfully as I may, my doom of sharing in the glass a constant change of customers, and of lying down and rising up with the...

All was over in a moment. I had fulfilled my destiny. I was a captive and a slave. I loved Dora Spenlow to distraction! She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy,...

The boy was lying, fast asleep, on a rude bed upon the floor; so pale with anxiety, and sadness, and the closeness of his prison, that he looked like death; not death as it shews...

Those darling byegone times, Mr Carker,’ said Cleopatra, ‘with their delicious fortresses, and their dear old dungeons, and their delightful places of torture, and their romantic vengeances, and their picturesque assaults and sieges, and everything...

[…] There are tales among us that you have sold yourself to the devil, and I know not what.”We all have, have we not?’ returned the stranger, looking up. ‘If we were fewer in number,...

…I hope that simple love and truth will be strong in the end. I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.

…lies is lies. Howsever they come, they didn’t ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, work round to the same.

Gradually, he fell into that deep tranquil sleep which ease from recent suffering alone imparts; that calm and peaceful rest which it is pain to wake from. Who, if this were death, would be roused...

A man would die tonight of lying out on the marshes, I thought. And then I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up...

The privileges of the side-table included the small prerogatives of sitting next to the toast, and taking two cups of tea to other people’s one.

There were times when he could not read the face he had studied so long, and when this lonely girl was a greater mystery to him than any women of the world…

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...

I feel an earnest and humble desire, and shall till I die, to increase the stock of harmless cheerfulness.

Yes. He saw her in his mind, exactly as she was. She bore him company with her pride, resentment, hatred, all as plain to him as her beauty; with nothing plainer to him than her...

Oliver Twist has asked for more!

It’s Christmas Day! said Scrooge to himself. “”I haven’t missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can.””

In this life we want nothing but facts, sir; nothing but facts.

. . . when the locked door opens, and there comes in a young woman, deadly pale, and with long fair hair, who glides to the fire, and sits down in the chair we have...

Lizzie! I never thought before, that there was a woman in the world who could affect me so much by saying so little. But don’t be hard in your construction of me. You don’t know...

Minerva House… was “”a finishing establishment for young ladies,”” where some twenty girls of the ages from thirteen to nineteen inclusive, acquired a smattering of everything and a knowledge of nothing.

Here’s the rule for bargains: ”Do other men, for they would do you.” That’s the true business precept.

Dickens writes that an event, “began to be forgotten, as most affairs are, when wonder, having no fresh food to support it, dies away of itself.

What the mud had been doing with itself, or where it came from, who could say? But it seemed to collect in a moment, as a crowd will, and in five minutes to have splashed...

I only hope, for the sake of the rising male sex generally, that you may be found in as vulnerable and soft-hearted a mood by the first eligible young fellow who appeals to your compassion.

Sudden shifts and changes are no bad preparation for political life.

Give me a moment, because I like to cry for joy. It’s so delicious, John dear, to cry for joy.

His shoes looked too large; his sleeve looked too long; his hair looked too limp; his features looked too mean; his exposed throat looked as if a halter would have done it good.

Bradley Headstone, in his decent black coat and waistcoat, and decent white shirt, and decent formal black tie, and decent pantaloons of pepper and salt, with his decent silver watch in his pocket and its...

they’re so fond of Liberty in this part of the globe, that they buy her and sell her and carry her to market with ’em. They’ve such a passion for Liberty, that they can’t help...

For the rest of his life, Oliver Twist remembers a single word of blessing spoken to him by another child because this word stood out so strikingly from the consistent discouragement around him.

…and to-morrow looked in my face more steadily than I could look at it

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.

Look round and round upon this bare bleak plain, and see even here, upon a winter’s day, how beautiful the shadows are! Alas! it is the nature of their kind to be so. The loveliest...

The water of the fountain ran, the swift river ran, the day ran into evening, so much life in the city ran into death according to rule, time and tide waited for no man, the...

Educating the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the Niger.

Law is an ass, an idiot.

Professionally he declines and falls, and as a friend he drops into poetry.

A Being, erect upon two legs, and bearing all the outward semblance of a man, and not of a monster.

To a young heart everything is fun.

On the Rampage, Pip, and off the Rampage, Pip; such is Life!

Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.

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...

The society of girls is a very delightful thing, Copperfield. It’s not professional, but it’s very delightful.

With a leer of mingled sweetness and slyness; with one eye on the future, one on the bride, and an arch expression in her face, partly spiritual, partly spirituous, and wholly professional and peculiar to...

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...

Mrs Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her clenliness more umcomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and some people do the same by...

There was once a king, and he had a queen; and he was the manliest of his gender, and she was the loveliest of hers. They had nineteen children, and were always having more.