Be natural my children. For the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of art.”(Last words, according to Dickens’s obituary in The Times.)

Your haughty religious people would have held their heads up to see me as I am tonight, and preached of flames and vengeance,’ cried the girl. ‘Oh, dear lady, why ar’n’t those who claim to...

It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas when the Great Creator was a child himself.

I know and deeply feel how sacredly you keep your promise.” – pg.807

In una parola, ero troppo codardo per fare quello che sapevo essere giusto, così come ero stato troppo codardo per evitare di fare quello che sapevo sbagliato. A quel tempo, non avevo avuto nessuna esperienza...

Wish me everything that you can wish for the woman you dearly love, and I have as good as got it, John. I have better than got it, John.

For our path in life…is stony and rugged now, and it rests with us to smooth it. We must fight our way onward. We must be brave. There are obstacles to be met, and we...

Mrs General had no opinions. Her way of forming a mind was to prevent it from forming opinions. She had a little circular set of mental grooves or rails on which she started little trains...

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.

When she took her opposite place in the carriage corner, the brightness in her face was so charming to behold, that on her exclaiming, “What beautiful stars and what a glorious night!” the Secretary said...

Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast. If a man habituated to a narrow circle of cares and pleasures, out of which he seldom travels, step beyond it, though for never so brief a space,...

You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!

A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world!

Look here. Upon my soul you mustn’t come into the place saying you want to know, you know.

Language was not powerful enough to describe the infant phenomenon.

He was bolder in the daylight–most men are.

This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in.

The business of the law is to increase the business of the law

If its individual citizens, to a man, are to be believed, it always is depressed, and always is stagnated, and always is at an alarming crisis, and never was otherwise; though as a body, they...

Missionaries are perfect nuisances and leave every place worse than they found it

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.

[She wasn’t] a logically reasoning woman, but God is good, and hearts may count in heaven as high as heads.

There are only two styles of portrait painting: the serious and the smirk.

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.

Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt kept an evening school in the village; that is to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of limited means and unlimited infirmity, who used to go to sleep from six to...

So, I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.

My sister’s bringing up had made me sensitive. 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...

This was a vagrant of sixty-five, who was going to prison for not playing the flute; or, in other words, for begging in the streets, and doing noting for his livelihood. In the next cell,...

I am no more annoyed when I think of the expression, than I should be annoyed by a man’s opinion of a picture of mine, who had no eye for pictures; or of a piece...

It matters little, she said, softly. “To you, very little. Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I...

The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit of us; but, so far we are...

Why, I don’t exactly know about perjury, my dear sir, replied the little gentleman. “Harsh word, my dear sir, very harsh word indeed. It’s a legal fiction, my dear sir, nothing more.”

I think it’s liquid aggravation that circulates through his veins, and not regular blood

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...

Give us kinder laws to bring us back when we’re a-going wrong and don’t set Jail, Jail, Jail afore us everywhere we turn

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...

She was truest to them in the season of trial, as all the quietly loyal and good will always be.

A smattering of everything, and a knowledge of nothing.

You don’t carry in your countenance a letter of recommendation.

May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?

It was the shadow of Some one who had gone by long before: of Some one who had gone on far away quite out of reach, never, never to come back. It was bright to...

Mrs. Rouncewell holds this opinion because she considers that a family of such antiquity and importance has a right to a ghost. She regards a ghost as one of the privileges of the upper classes,...

I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.

An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

Let the tears which fell, and the broken words which were exchanged in the long close embrace between the orphans, be sacred. A father, sister, and mother, were gained, and lost, in that one moment....

We have had for breakfast, toasts, cakes, a yorkshire pie, a piece of beef about the size and much the shape of my portmanteau, tea, coffee, ham and eggs…

…he walked up and down through life.

Junto dela nunca tive nem uma hora de felicidade, mas, mesmo assim, meu espírito, durante as vinte e quatro horas do dia, ainda desejava a felicidade de tê-la junto de mim até a morte.

That glorious vision of doing good is so often the sanguine mirage of so many good minds.

Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.