Charles Dickens

" LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest. Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds. Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time — as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look. The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery. "
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Charles Dickens
Autumn
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" God bless us, every one! "
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Prayer , Blessings
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" Second: them poor things well out o' this, and never no more will I interfere with Mrs. Cruncher's flopping, never no more!""Whatever housekeeping arrangement that may be," said Miss Pross, striving to dry her eyes and compose herself, "I have no doubt it is best that Mrs. Cruncher should have it entirely under her own superintendence.—O my poor darlings!""I go so far as to say, miss, moreover," proceeded Mr. Cruncher, with a most alarming tendency to hold forth as from a pulpit—"and let my words be took down and took to Mrs. Cruncher through yourself—that wot my opinions respectin' flopping has undergone a change, and that wot I only hope with all my heart as Mrs. Cruncher may be a flopping at the present time.""There, there, there! I hope she is, my dear man," cried the distracted Miss Pross, "and I hope she finds it answering her expectations. "
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Charles Dickens
classic , france
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" Perhaps the prayer that is offered when the time for praying is over is more terribly pathetic than any other. Yet one might hesitate to say that this prayer was unanswered.("The Undying Thing") "
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" Oh, let us love our occupations,Bless the squire and his relations,Live upon our daily rations,And always know our proper stations. "
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Life
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" He went to work in this preparatory lesson, not unlike Morgiana in the Forty Thieves: looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they contained. Say, good M’Choakumchild. When from thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each jar brim full by-and-by, dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within—or sometimes only maim him and distort him! "
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Imagination , Learning
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" I believe life is an education meant to teach us the need to be better people.  And I believe this learning often takes place through trial and error which may mean being an awful person at times before clearly seeing and grasping the necessity to improve. If you don't agree with me, just ask Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge.  I think Charles Dickens got it quite right. "
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Charles Dickens
Learning , Kindness
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" In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is--as the light called human life is--at its coming and its going. "
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Light , Human
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" His was not a lazy trustfulness that hoped, and did no more. "
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Charles Dickens
Action
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" Woodcourt: “Miss Summerson,” said Mr. Woodcourt, “if without obtruding myself on your confidence I may remain near you, pray let me do so.”Esther: “You are truly kind,” I answered. “I need wish to keep no secret of my own from you; if I keep any, it is another’s.”Woodcourt: “I quite understand. Trust me, I will remain near you only so long as I can fully respect it.”Esther: “I trust implicitly to you,” I said, “I know and deeply feel how sacredly you keep your promise.” - pg.807 "
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Charles Dickens
Promise , Trust
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" I resolved to tell my guardian that I doubted Orlick being the right sort of man to fill a post of trust at Miss Havisham’s. ‘Why of course he is not the right sort of man, Pip,’ said my guardian, comfortably satisfied beforehand on the general head, ‘because the man who fills the post of trust never is the right sort of man. "
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Charles Dickens
Trust , Expectations
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" I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. "
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Charles Dickens
Kindness , Forgiveness
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" My sorrow may bear involuntary witness against you at the judgement Throne; but my angry thoughts or my reproaches never will, I know! "
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Charles Dickens
Forgiveness , Anger
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Charles Dickens
born: died: occupation: cite this page:
07-02-1812 09-06-1870 Novelist, Social Critic citation
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