Inspirational Quotes by Charles Dickens — Words of Wisdom for Daily Success

“So, I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.”

“Your haughty religious people would have held their heads up to see me as I am tonight, and preached of flames and vengeance,' cried the girl. 'Oh, dear lady, why ar'n't those who claim to be God's own folks as gentle and as kind to us poor wretches as you, who, having youth, and beauty, and all that they have lost, might be a little proud instead of so much humbler?”

“Mrs Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her clenliness more umcomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.”

“Mrs. Joe war eine sehr reinliche Hausfrau, doch sie verstand sich ausnehmend gut darauf, ihre Reinlichkeit bequemer und unerträglicher zu machen, als jeder Schmutz gewesen wäre. Die Reinlichkeit ist der Gottesfurcht verwandt, und manche verfahren mit ihrer Religion ganz genauso.”

“Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.”

“It is a world of disappointment: often to the hopes we most cherish, and hopes that do our nature the greatest honour.”

“Things that are changed or gone will come back as they used to be.”

“The boy was lying, fast asleep, on a rude bed upon the floor; so pale with anxiety, and sadness, and the closeness of his prison, that he looked like death; not death as it shews in shroud and coffin, but in the guise it wears when life has just departed; when a young and gentle spirit has, but an instant, fled to Heaven: and the gross air of the world has not had time to breathe upon the changing dust it hallowed.”

“Before I go," he said, and paused -- "I may kiss her?”

“She dotes on poetry, sir. She adores it; I may say that her whole soul and mind are wound up, and entwined with it. She has produced some delightful pieces, herself, sir. You may have met with her 'Ode to an Expiring Frog,' sir.”

“Poetry makes life what lights and music do the stage.”

“In a word, it was impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present, from the innermost life of my life.”

“The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart and differing, have come together on the dark highway, to repair home together and to rest in her bosom.”

“But I am thinking like a lover, or like an ass: which I suppose is pretty nearly the same.”

“[T]he wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile.”

“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.”

“[She wasn't] a logically reasoning woman, but God is good, and hearts may count in heaven as high as heads.”

“Mr Lorry asks the witness questions:”

“There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.”

“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.”

“What greater gift than the love of a cat.”

“Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart.”

“Don't leave a stone unturned. It's always something, to know you have done the most you could.”