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

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

Never sign a valentine with your own name.
—Charles Dickens

The old, old fashion—death! Oh, thank God, all who see it, for that older fashion yet—of immortality!
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Immortality

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

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

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

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 their daily pilgrimage through the world.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Dreams

He would make a lovely corpse.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Death, Dying

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

Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Dress, Fashion

Here’s the rule for bargains: “Do other men, for they would do you.” That’s the true business precept.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Shopping

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

The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Endurance

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

I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Boredom, Bores

There is nothing truer than physiognomy, taken in connection with manner.
—Charles Dickens

There is no substitute for thoroughgoing, ardent and sincere earnestness.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Sincerity, Men

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that everyone of those darkly clustered houses encloses it’s own secret that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of it’s imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Humanity, Reflection, Secrets

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

It will be very generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Humanity, Human Nature

Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but—I hope—into a better shape.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Challenges

Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families; and in families not regulated by that pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances… in short, by the influence of Woman, in the lofty character of Wife, they may be expected with confidence, and must be borne with philosophy.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Family

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

I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: World

It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: One liners, Family, Babies

Minerva House was “a finishing establishment for young ladies,” where some twenty girls of the ages from thirteen to nineteen inclusive, acquired a smattering of everything and a knowledge of nothing.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: School, Education

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

Its very strange, said Mr. Dick that I never can get that quite right; I never can make that perfectly clear.
—Charles Dickens

Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Virtue, Vice

May I tell you why it seems to me a good thing for us to remember wrong that has been done us? That we may forgive it.
—Charles Dickens
Topics: Forgiveness

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