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and cloud which piled up in the west an airy city, wall heaped on wall, and battlement on battlement; the light was all withdrawn; the shining church turned cold and dark; the stream forgot to smile; the birds were silent; and the gloom of winter dwelt on everything.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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Edward Lear English Humorist, Illustrator
- Jerome K. Jerome English Humorist, Novelist
- Wilkie Collins English Novelist, Playwright
- Charles Reade British Author
- E. F. Benson English Novelist, Biographer
- Thomas Hardy English Novelist, Poet
- Patrick White Australian Novelist
- Laurence Housman English Novelist, Dramatist
- Robert Ranke Graves British Writer
- William Hogarth English Painter, Engraver
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