Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he's well-dressed. There ain't much credit in that.

— Charles Dickens

Apprehension of a painful or disagreeable recognition made me tremble. I am confident that it took no distinctness of shape, and that it was the revival for a few minutes of the terror of childhood.

— Charles Dickens

Aren't the sane and the insane equal at night as the sane lie a dreaming?

— Charles Dickens

Are you thankful for not being young?'' Yes, sir. If I was young, it would all have to be gone through again, and the end would be a weary way off, don't you see?...

— Charles Dickens

As she stooped over him, her tears fell upon his forehead. The boy stirred, and smiled in his sleep, as though these marks of pity and compassion had awakened some pleasant dream of a love and affection he had never known; as a strain of gentle music, or the rippling of water in a silent place, or the odor of a flower, or even the mention of a familiar word, will sometimes call up sudden dim remembrances of scenes that never were, in this life; which vanish like a breath; and which some brief memory of a happier existence, long gone by, would seem to have awakened, for no voluntary exertion of the mind can ever recall them.

— Charles Dickens

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

— Charles Dickens

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other...every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!

— Charles Dickens

A word in earnest is as good as a speech

— Charles Dickens

Aye, though he loved her from his soul with such a self-denying love as woman seldom wins; he spoke from first to last of Martin.

— Charles Dickens

Because if it is to spite her,' Biddy pursued, 'I should think -but you know best-that might be better and more independently done by caring nothing for her words. And if it is to gain her over, I should think -but you know best-she was not worth gaining over.

— Charles Dickens