Charles Dickens Quotes

Charles Dickens (262)

Birth:	7th February, 1812
Death:	9th June, 1870
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Critic, Writer

About

Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812, at Landport in Portsea, the second of eight children to John and Elizabeth Dickens. Dickens left school to work in a factory after his father was thrown into debtors' prison. Though he had little formal education, his early impoverishment drove him to succeed. He edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels and hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.
In 1832, at age 20, Dickens was energetic, full of good humour, enjoyed mimicry and popular entertainment, lacked a clear sense of what he wanted to become, yet knew he wanted to be famous. A year later he submitted his first story, "A Dinner at Poplar Walk" to the London periodical, Monthly Magazine. He rented rooms at Furnival's Inn becoming a political journalist, reporting on parliamentary debate and travelling across Britain to cover election campaigns for the Morning Chronicle. His journalism, in the form of sketches in periodicals, formed his first collection of pieces Sketches by Boz—Boz being a family nickname he employed as a pseudonym for some years—published in 1836. He continued to contribute to and edit journals throughout his literary career.
In late November 1851, Dickens moved into Tavistock House where he wrote Bleak House (1852–53), Hard Times (1854) and Little Dorrit (1857). It was here he indulged in the amateur theatricals which are described in Forster's "Life".
He was died at his residence, Higham, near Rochester, Kent, 9 June 1870, aged 58 years.

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• Professionally he declines and falls, and as a friend he drops into poetry.

  Charles Dickens

• The mistake was made of putting some of the trouble out of King Charles’s head into my head.

  Charles Dickens

• In the absence of the planet Venus, who has gone on business to the Horse Guards.

  Charles Dickens

• It was not a bosom to repose upon, but it was a capital bosom to hang jewels upon.

  Charles Dickens

• Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

  Charles Dickens

• You don’t carry in your countenance a letter of recommendation.

  Charles Dickens

• I wants to make your flesh creep.

  Charles Dickens

• Minerva House was a finishing establishment for young ladies, where some twenty girls of the ages from thirteen to nineteen inclusive, acquired a smattering of everything and a knowledge of nothing.

  Charles Dickens

• The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.

  Charles Dickens

• They are so filthy and bestial that no honest man would admit one into his house for a water-closet doormat.

  Charles Dickens

• It will be very generally found that those who will sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples.

  Charles Dickens

  Topics in Nature

• Perhaps it is a good thing to have an unsound hobby ridden hard; for it is sooner ridden to death.

  Charles Dickens

• There is never enough time to do or say all the things that we would wish; The thing is to do as much as you can in the time that you have.

  Charles Dickens

• The business of the law is to increase the business of the law.

  Charles Dickens

  Topics in Business

• There are only two styles of portrait painting, the serious and the smirk.

  Charles Dickens

• He did each single thing as if he did nothing else.

  Charles Dickens

• The privileges of the side-table included the small prerogatives of sitting next to the toast, and taking two cups of tea to other people’s one.

  Charles Dickens

• It was no fancy of mine about his hands, I observed; for he frequently ground the palms against each other as if to squeeze them dry and warm, besides often wiping them, in a stealthy way, on his pocket-handkerchief.

  Charles Dickens

• Let me feel now what sharp distress I may.

  Charles Dickens

• The rich, sweet smell of the hayricks rose to his chamber window; the hundred perfumes of the little flower-garden beneath scented the air around; the deep-green meadows shone in the morning dew that glistened on every leaf as it trembled in the gentle air: and the birds sang as if every sparkling drop were a fountain of inspiration to them.

  Charles Dickens