Not presume to dictate, but broiled fowl and mushrooms – capital thing!

As she frequently remarked when she made any such mistake, it would be all the same a hundred years hence.

He would make a lovely corpse.

He has gone to the demnition bow-wows.

Some medical beast had revived tar-water in those days as a fine medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the cupboard; having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its nastiness....

These sequestered nooks are the public offices of the legal profession, where writs are issued, judgments signed, declarations filed, and numerous other ingenious machines put in motion for the torture and torment of His Majesty’s...

Oh Jaggerth, Jaggerth, Jaggerth! all otherth ith Cag-Maggerth, give me Jaggerth!

Lead on! said Scrooge. “”Lead on! The night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!””

It was the best of times

I should like to ask you: — Does your childhood seem far off? Do the days when you sat at your mother’s knee, seem days of very long ago?” Responding to his softened manner, Mr....

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...

Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on...

Mrs. Joe war eine sehr reinliche Hausfrau, doch sie verstand sich ausnehmend gut darauf, ihre Reinlichkeit bequemer und unerträglicher zu machen, als jeder Schmutz gewesen wäre. Die Reinlichkeit ist der Gottesfurcht verwandt, und manche verfahren...

and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty children conducting themselves as one, but every child was conducting itself like forty.

Second: them poor things well out o’ this, and never no more will I interfere with Mrs. Cruncher’s flopping, never no more!””Whatever housekeeping arrangement that may be,” said Miss Pross, striving to dry her eyes...

To surround anything, however monstrous or ridiculous, with an air of mystery, is to invest it with a secret charm, and power of attraction which to the crowd is irresistible.

You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why?””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...

For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. And when you see your own bright beauty springing up...

We’ll start to forget a place once we left it

The sky was dark and gloomy, the air was damp and raw, the streets were wet and sloppy. The smoke hung sluggishly above the chimney-tops as if it lacked the courage to rise, and the...

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.

Thus, it comes to pass, that a certain room in a certain old hall, where a certain bad lord, baronet, knight, or gentleman, shot himself, has certain planks in the floor from which the blood...

Never sign a Valentine with your own name.

It had grown darker as they talked, and the wind was sawing and the sawdust was whirling outside paler windows. The underlying churchyard was already settling into deep dim shade, and the shade was creeping...

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

She’s the only sylph I ever saw, who could stand upon one leg, and play the tambourine on her other knee, like a sylph.

I have made up my mind that I must have money, Pa. I feel that I can’t beg it, borrow it, or steal it; and so I have resolved that I must marry it.

But the words she spoke of Mrs Harris, lambs could not forgive . . . nor worms forget.””

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

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.

There is a passion for hunting something deeply implanted in the human breast.

He spoke in hard and angry earnest, if a man ever did,” replied the girl, shaking her head. “He is an earnest man when his hatred is up. I know many who do worse things;...