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Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature.
Topic: Abstinence
Source: None
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Accidents will occur in the best regulated families.
Topic: Accident
Source: The Personal History of David Copperfield (ch. XXVIII)
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Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families.
Topic: Accidents
Source: None
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This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in.
Topic: Actions
Source: None
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A man who could build a church, as one may say, by squinting at a
sheet of paper.
Topic: Architecture
Source: The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (vol. II, ch. VI)
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"If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, "the law is an ass, a
idiot."
Topic: Arithmetic
Source: Oliver Twist (ch. LI)
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Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random
digits is, of course, in a state of sin.
Topic: Arithmetic
Source: Oliver Twist (ch. LI)
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God bless us every one.
Topic: Blessings
Source: A Christmas Carol (stave 3)
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Mrs. Crupp had indignantly assured him that there wasn't room to
swing a cat there; but as Mr. Dick justly observed to me, sitting
down on the foot of the bed, nursing his leg, "You know,
Trotwood, I don't want to swing a cat. I never do swing a cat.
Therefore what does that signify to me?"
Topic: Cats
Source: The Personal History of David Copperfield (vol. II, ch. VI)
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I feel an earnest and humble desire, and shall till I die, to increase the stock of harmless cheerfulness.
Topic: Cheerfulness
Source: None
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There is a wisdom of the head, and... a wisdom of the heart.
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
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Circumstances beyond my individual control.
Topic: Circumstance
Source: The Personal History of David Copperfield (ch. 20)
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Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.
Topic: Communication
Source: None
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Hallo! A great deal of steam! the pudding was out of the
copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A
smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to each
other, with a laundress's next door to that. That was the
pudding.
Topic: Cookery
Source: A Christmas Carol (stave three)
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A person who can't pay, gets another person who can't pay, to guarantee that he can pay.
Topic: Credit
Source: None
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It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.
Topic: Death / Immortality
Source: None
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It is a far, far better thing that I do, than anything I have ever done; it is a far, far, better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.
Topic: Death / Immortality
Source: None
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When I got up to the Peacock--where I found everybody drinking
hot punch in self-preservation.
Topic: Drinking
Source: The Holly Tree Inn
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"Wery good power o' suction, Sammy," said Mr. Weller the
elder. . . . "You'd ha' made an uncommon fine oyster, Sammy, if
you'd been born in that station o' life."
Topic: Drinking
Source: The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (ch. XXIII)
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A friendly swarry, consisting of a boiled leg of mutton with the
usual trimmings.
Topic: Eating
Source: The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (ch. XXXVII)
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I have known him [Micawber] come home to supper with a flood of
tears, and a declaration that nothing was now left but a jail;
and go to bed making a calculation of the expense of putting
bow-windows to the house, "in case anything turned up," which was
his favorite expression.
Topic: Expectation
Source: The Personal History of David Copperfield (ch. XI)
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With affection beaming in one eye and calculation shining out of
the other.
Topic: Eyes
Source: The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (ch. VIII)
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He has gone to the demnition bow-wows.
Topic: Fate
Source: The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (ch. LXIV)
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I never will desert Mr. Micawber.
Topic: Fidelity
Source: The Personal History of David Copperfield (ch. XII)
|
Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship;
and pass the rosy wine.
Topic: Friendship
Source: The Old Curiosity Ship (ch. VII)
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What is the odds so long as the fire of souls is kindled at the
taper of conwiviality, and the wing of friendship never moults a
feather?
Topic: Friendship
Source: The Old Curiosity Shop (ch. II)
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"There are strings," said Mr. Tappertit, ". . . in the human heart
that had better not be wibrated."
Topic: Heart
Source: Barnaby Rudge (ch. XXII)
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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.
Topic: Home
Source: None
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I am well aware that I am the 'umblest person going . . . let the
other be where he may.
Topic: Humility
Source: The Personal History of David Copperfield (vol. I, ch. XVII)
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'Umble we are, 'umble we have been, 'umble we shall ever be.
Topic: Humility
Source: The Personal History of David Copperfield (vol. I, ch. XVII)
|
Oliver Twist has asked for more.
Topic: Hunger
Source: Oliver Twist (ch. II)
|
There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear
to them except in the form of bread.
Topic: Hunger
Source: Oliver Twist (ch. II)
|
Oh, a dainty plant is the ivy green,
That creepeth o'er ruins old!
Of right choice food are his meals I ween,
In his cell so lone and cold.
. . . .
Creeping where no life is seen,
A rare old plant is the ivy green.
Topic: Ivy
Source: The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (ch. VI)
|
When found, make a note of.
Topic: Journalism
Source: Dombey and Son (ch. 15)
|
If there were no bad people there would be no good lawyers.
Topic: Lawyers
Source: None
|
I made a compact with myself that in my person literature should
stand by itself, of itself, and for itself.
Topic: Literature
Source: in a speech at a Liverpool Banquet
|
If the parks be "the lungs of London" we wonder what Greenwich
Fair is--a periodical breaking out, we suppose--a sort of spring
rash.
Topic: London
Source: Greenwich Fair
|
The ocean asks for nothing but those
who stand by her shores
gradually attune themselves to her rhythm
Charles Dickens in David Copperfield.
Topic: Love
Source: None
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Some credit in being jolly.
Topic: Merriment
Source: The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (ch. V)
|
Horatio looked handsomely miserable, like Hamlet slipping on a
piece of orange-peel.
Topic: Misery
Source: Sketches by Boz--Horatio Sparkins, (omitted in some editions)
|
Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
Topic: Misfortune
Source: None
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The Bearings of this observation lays in the application on it.
Topic: Morality
Source: Dombey and Son (ch. XXIII)
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Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral
standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth.
What humanity own to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus
ranks for me higher than all the achievements the inquiring
constructive mind.
Topic: Morality
Source: Dombey and Son (ch. XXIII)
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Morality is of the highest importance--but for us, not for God.
Topic: Morality
Source: Dombey and Son (ch. XXIII)
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The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in
our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence
depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and
dignity to life.
Topic: Morality
Source: Dombey and Son (ch. XXIII)
|
The American elite is almost beyond redemption. . . . Moral
relativism has set in so deeply that the gilded classes have
become incapable of discerning right from wrong. Everything can
be explained away, especially by journalists. Life is one great
moral mush--sophistry washed down with Chardonnay. The ordinary
citizens, thank goodness, still adhere to absolutes. . . . It is
they who have saved the republic from creeping degradation while
their "betters" were derelict.
Topic: Morality
Source: Dombey and Son (ch. XXIII)
|
Known by the sobriquet of "The Artful Dodger."
Topic: Names
Source: Oliver Twist (ch. 8)
|
The dodgerest of all the dodgers.
Topic: Names
Source: Our Mutual Friend (ch. XIII)
|
"Brooks of Sheffield": "'Somebody's sharp.' 'Who is?'" asked the
gentleman, laughing. I looked up quickly, being curious to know.
"Only Brooks of Sheffield," said Mr. Murdstone. I was glad to
find it was only Brooks of Sheffield; for at first I really
thought that it was I.
Topic: Names
Source: The Personal History of David Copperfield (ch. 2)
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Called me wessel, Sammy--a wessel of wrath.
Topic: Names
Source: The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (ch. 22)
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