Charles Dickens (1812–70) was one of England’s greatest novelists. This quintessential Victorian author is recognized primarily for his epic stories, vivid characters, and thorough portrayal of contemporary life.
Dickens’s story is one of the rags to riches. He was born in Portsmouth. His schooling was brief because his father was imprisoned for bad debt. In the custom of the time, the whole family, except for Charles, was sent to prison along with their patriarch. Two days after his 12th birthday, Dickens was sent to work as a boy-apprentice in a blacking factory, pasting labels on pots of dye for 12 hours a day in a rat-infested warehouse. After four months, he was rescued by his father and allowed to resume his education. The humiliating stigma and the appalling conditions, as well as loneliness and despair, became fictionalized in two of Dickens’s better-known novels David Copperfield (1849–50) and Great Expectations (1860–61.)
Critical estimation of Dickens’s literary career commonly splits his novels into two sets: the early novels, from his début with The Pickwick Papers (1836–37) to David Copperfield, and his later novels, beginning with Bleak House (1853.) Admirers of all that is commonly meant by the term Dickensian—the novelist’s irrepressible verve and his inexhaustible supply of eccentrics, comic situations, emotions, and humor—locate Dickens’s greatness in his first period.
Dickens’s novella A Christmas Carol (1843,) remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist (1837–39) and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted. His 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, set in London and Paris, is his best-known work of historical fiction.
Dickens managed a full social and personal life while working at a frenzied pace. As well as a massive list of novels he published an autobiography, edited weekly periodicals including Household Words and All Year Round, wrote travel books and administered charitable organizations. He was also a theatre enthusiast, wrote plays, and performed before Queen Victoria in 1851. His later career was marked by domestic unhappiness, in which he separated from his wife and had an affair with Ellen Teman, an actress 20 years his junior. He died of a stroke in 1870 and is buried at Westminster Abbey.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Charles Dickens
There is no substitute for thoroughgoing, ardent and sincere earnestness.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Men, Sincerity
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
Topics: Marriage, Wives
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.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Anger, Temper
There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.
—Charles Dickens
Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Vice, Virtue
Time is the greatest and longest established spinner of all … His factory is a secret place, his work noiseless, and his hands are mutes.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Time, Time Management
Alas! how few of nature’s faces there are to gladden us with their beauty!—The cares, and sorrows, and hungerings of the world change them, as they change hearts; and it is only when the passions sleep and have lost their hold forever that the troubled clouds pass off, and leave heaven’s surface clear.—It is a common thing for the countenances of the dead, even in that fixed and rigid state, to subside into the long forgotten expression of infancy, and settle into the very look of early life.—So calm, so peaceful do they grow again, that those who knew them in their happy childhood, kneel by the coffin’s side in awe, and see the angels even upon earth.
—Charles Dickens
Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Communication
It’s nothing, returned Mrs Chick. “It’s merely change of weather. We must expect change.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Weather
A man in public life expects to be sneered at—it is the fault of his elevated situation, and not of himself.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Public
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 small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Doing Your Best
The first external revelations of the dry-rot in men is a tendency to lurk and lounge; to be at street corners without intelligible reason; to be going anywhere when met; to be about many places rather than any; to do nothing tangible but to have an intention of performing a number of tangible duties tomorrow or the day after.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Idleness
And a beautiful world we live in, when it is possible, and when many other such things are possible, and not only possible, but done under that sky there, every day.
—Charles Dickens
Charity begins at home and justice begins next door.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Charity, Justice, Welfare
Up the two terrace flights of steps the rain ran wildly, and beat at the great door, like a swift messenger rousing those within; …
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Rain
Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human nature.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Appetite, Nature
The whole difference between construction and creation is this; that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: To Be Born Everyday, Creativity
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 inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigor. With such people the gray head is but the impression of the old fellow’s hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Age
Cheerfulness and contentment are great beautifiers and are famous preservers of youthful looks.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Cheerfulness
Lord, keep my memory green.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Memory, Reason, Thought
A boy’s story is the best that is ever told.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Time, Youth
Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Worry, Mental Illness
There is probably a smell of roasted chestnuts and other good comfortable things all the time, for we are telling Winter Stories – Ghost Stories, or more shame for us – round the Christmas fire; and we have never stirred, except to draw a little nearer to it.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Winter
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.
—Charles Dickens
Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Miscellaneous, Nature, Change
A moment, and its glory was no more. The sun went down beneath the long dark lines of hill and cloud which piled up in the west an airy city, wall heaped on wall, and battlement on battlement; the light was all withdrawn; the shining church turned cold and dark; the stream forgot to smile; the birds were silent; and the gloom of winter dwelt on everything.
—Charles Dickens
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
Topics: Weather
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 and slab with dollars. Men were weighed by their dollars, measures were gauged by their dollars; life was auctioned, appraised, put up, and knocked down for its dollars. The next respectable thing to dollars was any venture having their attainment for its end. The more of that worthless ballast, honor and fair-dealing, which any man cast overboard from the ship of his Good Nature and Good Intent, the more ample stowage-room he had for dollars. Make commerce one huge lie and mighty theft. Deface the banner of the nation for an idle rag; pollute it star by star; and cut out stripe by stripe as from the arm of a degraded soldier. Do anything for dollars! What is a flag to them!
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Money
We know, Mr. Weller—we, who are men of the world—that a good uniform must work its way with the women, sooner or later.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: The Military
Nature often enshrines gallant and noble hearts in weak bosoms; oftenest, God bless her, in woman’s breast.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Bravery
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