Charles Dickens

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

Charity begins at home, and generally ends there.

I have been bent and broken, but I hope into a better shape.

He was a man of an amiable disposition, but he had a way of looking at you as if he were going to bite you.

It is a most miserable thing to feel that you have been an encumbrance on the earth, to the wrong person.

He had a head for business, and a heart for nothing else.

Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.

It is a world of disappointment: often to the hopes we most cherish, and always to the hopes we most deserve.

I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.

It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled.

He was a man of the world, and he knew that the world was a very bad place.

It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.

There are some people who, if they don't know the answer to a question, will tell you something that sounds like the answer.

A man is lucky if he is the first love of a woman. A woman is lucky if she is the last love of a man.

There are only two styles of writing: the good and the bad. The good is that which is clear, concise, and to the point. The bad is that which is obscure, verbose, and rambling.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.

Reflect upon your present blessings—of which every man has many—not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before—more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.

It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home.