I have always thought of Christmas as a good time; a kind, forgiving, generous, pleasant time; a time when men and women seem to open their hearts freely, and so I say, God bless Christmas!

`Somebody’s sharp.’ `Who is?’ asked the gentleman, laughing . . . `Only Brooks of Sheffield,’ said Mr Murdstone.

Keep up appearances whatever you do.

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

Far better hang wrong fler than no fler.

Dollars! All their cares, hopes, joys, affections, virtues, and associations seemed to be melted down into dollars. Whatever the chance contributions that fell into the slow cauldron of their talk, they made the gruel thick...

Queer Street is full of lodgers just at present.

It is an old prerogative of kings to govern everything but their passions.

You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer. Nevertheless, you shall not get the better of me. I am an Englishwoman.

It will be very generally found that those who will sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples

Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.

No one has the least regard for the man; with them all, he has been an object of avoidance, suspicion, and aversion; but the spark of life within him is curiously separable from himself now,...

She had curiously thoughtful and attentive eyes; eyes that were very pretty and very good.

You are hard at work madam ,” said the man near her.Yes,” Answered Madam Defarge ; ” I have a good deal to do.”What do you make, Madam ?”Many things.”For instance —“For instance,” returned Madam...

A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.

He gave it its present name, and lived here shut up: day and night poring over the wicked heaps of papers in the suit, and hoping against hope to disentangle it from its mystification and...

She was a most wonderful woman for prowling about the house. How she got from story to story was a mystery beyond solution. A lady so decorous in herself, and so highly connected, was not...

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.

Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.

To do a great right, you may do a little wrong; and you may take any means which the end to be attained will justify.

It was one of those hot, silent nights, when people sit at windows, listening for the thunder which they know will shortly break; when they recall dismal tales of hurricanes and earthquakes; and of lonely...

A boy’s story is the best that is ever told.

The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.

Indeed, it may be laid down as a general principle, that the more extended the ancestry, the greater the amount of violence and vagabondism; for in ancient days those two amusements, combining a wholesome excitement...

C-l-e-a-n, clean, verb active, to make bright, to scour. W-i-n, win, d-e-r, der, winder, a casement. When the boy knows this out of the book, he goes and does it.

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.

Why am I always at war with myself? Why have I told, as if upon compulsion, what I knew all along I ought to have withheld? Why am I making a friend of this woman...

No one is useless in this world, retorted the Secretary, “”who lightens the burden of it for any one else.””

Dumb as a drum vith a hole in it, sir.

Literature should stand by itself, of itself, and for itself.

I am the Ghost of Christmas Present, said the Spirit. “”Look upon me!””

Mind like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.

I hope I know my own unworthiness, and that I hate and despise myself and all my fellow-creatures as every practicable Christian should.

Oliver has long since grown stout and healthy; but health or sickness made no difference in his warm feelings to those about him, though they do in the feelings of a great many people. He...

I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul.

Poetry makes life what lights and music do the stage.

The present representative of the Dedlocks is an excellent master. He supposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of individual characters, intentions, or opinions, and is persuaded that he was born to supersede the...

I mean a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most men’s sometimes do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after all...

One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it’s left behind.

Because thou hast made the Lord, which is thy refuge, even the most high they habitation. There shall be no evil before thee, neither shall any plague come by thy dwelling. He shall call upon...

Mas uma vez o senhor me disse: “Que Deus a abençoe! Que Deus a perdoe!” E se foi capaz de me dizer isso naquela ocasião, não hesitará em repetir agora as palavras… agora que passei...

There are some promotions in life, which, independent of the more substantial rewards they offer, acquire peculiar value and dignity from the coats and waistcoats connected with them. A field-marshal has his uniform; a bishop...

Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself.

The white face of the winter day came sluggishly on, veiled in a frosty mist; and the shadowy ships in the river slowly changed to black substances; and the sun, blood-red on the eastern marshes...

. . . Charles Darnay seemed to stand in a company of the dead. Ghosts all! The ghost of beauty, the ghost of stateliness, the ghost of elegance, the ghost of pride, the ghost of...

Life is made of ever so many partings welded together

Huge knots of sea-weed hung upon the jagged and pointed stones, trembling in every breath of wind; and the green ivy clung mournfully round the dark and ruined battlements. Behind it rose the ancient castle,...

Father Time is not always a hard parent, and, though he tarries for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly upon those who have used him well; making them old men and women...

We’ve got a private master comes to teach us at home, but we ain’t proud, because ma says it’s sinful.

. . . I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul. In my degradation I have not been so degraded but that the sight of you with your...