Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Charles Dickens (English Novelist)

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

Never sign a valentine with your own name.
Charles Dickens

A day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self.
Charles Dickens
Topics: Time Management, Time

Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.
Charles Dickens
Topics: Alcohol, Alcoholism

There are times when ignorance is bliss, indeed.
Charles Dickens
Topics: Ignorance

There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.
Charles Dickens
Topics: Truth

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: Temper, Anger

A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world!
Charles Dickens
Topics: Christmas

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

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

Nature often enshrines gallant and noble hearts in weak bosoms; oftenest, God bless her, in woman’s breast.
Charles Dickens
Topics: Bravery

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: Mental Illness, Worry

Once upon a time—of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve—old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house.
Charles Dickens
Topics: Christmas

Black are the brooding clouds and troubled the deep waters, when the Sea of Thought, first heaving from a calm, gives up its Dead
Charles Dickens
Topics: Weather

Industry is the soul of business and the keystone of prosperity.
Charles Dickens
Topics: Business

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a little patronage more so.
Charles Dickens
Topics: Attitude

With affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.
Charles Dickens
Topics: Hypocrisy

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

Never close your lips to those to whom you have opened your heart.
Charles Dickens
Topics: Romance

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 are ready to make oath upon the Evangelists, at any hour of the day or night, that it is the most thriving and prosperous of all countries on the habitable globe.
Charles Dickens
Topics: America

Try to do to others as you would have them do to you, and do not be discouraged if they fail sometimes. It is much better that they should fail than that you should.
Charles Dickens
Topics: Failure

Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort, and like them, are often successfully cured by remedies in themselves very nauseous and unpalatable.
Charles Dickens
Topics: Mind, Laziness, Wealth

It was not the wine, murmured Mr. Snodgrass, in a broken voice. It was the salmon.
Charles Dickens
Topics: Wine

Although a skilful flatterer is a most delightful companion, if you can keep him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.
Charles Dickens
Topics: Flattery

Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.
Charles Dickens
Topics: Kindness, Heart

It was a good thing to have a couple of thousand people all rigid and frozen together, in the palm of one’s hand.
Charles Dickens
Topics: Praise, Audiences

The world, is a conventional phrase, which being interpreted, signifies all the rascality in it.
Charles Dickens
Topics: World

I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.
Charles Dickens
Topics: Christmas

My other piece of advice, Copperfield, said Mr. Micawber, you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and – and in short you are for ever floored. As I am!
Charles Dickens
Topics: Economics

I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing, when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.
Charles Dickens
Topics: Children

If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.
Charles Dickens
Topics: Law, Lawyers

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