Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist and social critic who created some of the world’s best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognized him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.

Charles Dickens Quotes

1. “Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.”
— Charles Dickens

2. “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.”
— Charles Dickens

3. “My advice is to never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time.”
— Charles Dickens

4. “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.”
— Charles Dickens

5. “Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.”
— Charles Dickens

6. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
— Charles Dickens

7. “Ask no questions, and you’ll be told no lies.”
— Charles Dickens

8. “What greater gift than the love of a cat.”
— Charles Dickens

9. “Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.”
— Charles Dickens

10. “The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.”
— Charles Dickens

11. “A loving heart is the truest wisdom.”
— Charles Dickens

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

13. “Reflect upon your present blessings – of which every man has many – not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”
— Charles Dickens

14. “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.”
— Charles Dickens

15. “The most important thing in life is to stop saying ‘I wish’ and start saying ‘I will.’ Consider nothing impossible, then treat possibilities as probabilities.”
— Charles Dickens

16. “Spring is the time of year when it is summer in the sun and winter in the shade.”
— Charles Dickens

17. “Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we’d give blood.”
— Charles Dickens

18. “I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”
— Charles Dickens

19. “I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.”
— Charles Dickens

20. “A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.”
— Charles Dickens

21. “Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart.”
— Charles Dickens

22. “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.”
— Charles Dickens

23. “Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?”
— Charles Dickens

24. “Every traveler has a home of his own, and he learns to appreciate it the more from his wandering.”
— Charles Dickens

25. “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”
— Charles Dickens

26. “I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.”
— Charles Dickens

27. “Walk and be Happy, Walk and be Healthy…”
— Charles Dickens

28. “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.”
— Charles Dickens

29. “It is the last straw that breaks the camel’s back.”
— Charles Dickens

30. “There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.”
— Charles Dickens

31. “To a young heart everything is fun.”
— Charles Dickens

32. “We forge the chains we wear in life.”
— Charles Dickens

33. “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.”
— Charles Dickens

34. “God bless us, every one!”
— Charles Dickens

35. “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”
— Charles Dickens

36. “An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.”
— Charles Dickens

37. “A very little key will open a very heavy door.”
— Charles Dickens

38. “The law is an ass, an idiot.”
— Charles Dickens

39. “The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.”
— Charles Dickens

40. “The sum of the whole is this: walk and be happy; walk and be healthy. The best way to lengthen out our days is to walk steadily and with a purpose.”
— Charles Dickens

41. “Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.”
— Charles Dickens

42. “Once a gentleman, and always a gentleman.”
— Charles Dickens

43. “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”
— Charles Dickens

44. “There is prodigious strength in sorrow and despair.”
— Charles Dickens

45. “Least said, soonest mended.”
— Charles Dickens

46. “A smattering of everything, and a knowledge of nothing.”
— Charles Dickens

47. “A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.”
— Charles Dickens

48. “Death is a mighty, universal truth.”
— Charles Dickens

49. “And can it be that in a world so full and busy the loss of one creature makes a void so wide and deep that nothing but the width and depth of eternity can fill it up!”
— Charles Dickens

50. “Do all the good you can and make as little fuss about it as possible.”
— Charles Dickens

51. “A new heart for a New Year, always!”
— Charles Dickens

52. “Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; – the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!”
— Charles Dickens

53. “We need never be ashamed of our tears.”
— Charles Dickens

54. “No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.”
— Charles Dickens

55. “Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.”
— Charles Dickens

56. “No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused.”
— Charles Dickens

57. “And I am bored to death with it. Bored to death with this place, bored to death with my life, bored to death with myself.”
— Charles Dickens

58. “It’s in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.”
— Charles Dickens

59. “If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.”
— Charles Dickens

60. “There was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.”
— Charles Dickens

61. “Remembrance, like a candle, burns brightest at Christmastime.”
— Charles Dickens

62. “The year end brings no greater pleasure then the opportunity to express to you season’s greetings and good wishes. May your holidays and new year be filled with joy.”
— Charles Dickens

63. “Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own.”
— Charles Dickens

64. “Consider nothing impossible, then treat possiblities as probabilities.”
— Charles Dickens

65. “Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces – and as it gets older and stronger, it will tear deeper – love her, love her, love her!”
— Charles Dickens

66. “The sun himself is weak when he first rises, and gathers strength and courage as the day gets on.”
— Charles Dickens

67. “For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.”
— Charles Dickens

68. “Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes.”
— Charles Dickens

69. “New thoughts and hopes were whirling through my mind, and all the colours of my life were changing.”
— Charles Dickens

70. “And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!”
— Charles Dickens

71. “Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!”
— Charles Dickens

72. “Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait.”
— Charles Dickens

73. “It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home.”
— Charles Dickens

74. “Love is in all things a most wonderful teacher.”
— Charles Dickens

75. “Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay.”
— Charles Dickens

76. “People like us don’t go out at night cause people like them see us for what we are.”
— Charles Dickens

77. “Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.”
— Charles Dickens

78. “We can refute assertions, but who can refute silence?”
— Charles Dickens

79. “We never tire of the friendships we form with books.”
— Charles Dickens

80. “A merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to the world!”
— Charles Dickens

81. “I stole her heart away and put ice in its place.”
— Charles Dickens

82. “For not an orphan in the wide world can be so deserted as the child who is an outcast from a living parent’s love.”
— Charles Dickens

83. “Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.”
— Charles Dickens

84. “Christmas is a poor excuse every 25th of December to pick a man’s pockets.”
— Charles Dickens

85. “I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to heaven!”
— Charles Dickens

86. “Little Red Riding Hood was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood, I should have known perfect bliss.”
— Charles Dickens

87. “There are chords in the human heart- strange, varying strings- which are only struck by accident; which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most passionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual touch.”
— Charles Dickens

88. “It is no small thing, when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.”
— Charles Dickens

89. “Try to do unto others as you would have them do to you, and do not be discouraged if they fail sometimes. It is much better that they should fail than you should.”
— Charles Dickens

90. “Industry is the soul of business and the keystone of prosperity.”
— Charles Dickens

91. “Home is like the ship at sea, Sailing on eternally; Oft the anchor forth we cast, But can never make it fast.”
— Charles Dickens

92. “I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.”
— Charles Dickens

93. “Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human nature .”
— Charles Dickens

94. “I only ask for information.”
— Charles Dickens

95. “Cheerfulness and contentment are great beautifiers, and are famous preservers of good looks.”
— Charles Dickens

96. “I was a blacksmith’s boy but yesterday; I am – what shall I say I am today?”
— Charles Dickens

97. “And a beautiful world we live in, when it is possible, and when many other such things are possible, and not only possible, but done – done, see you! – under that sky there, every day.”
— Charles Dickens

98. “I have been, as the phrase is, liberally educated, and am fit for nothing.”
— Charles Dickens

99. “My dear young lady, crime, like death, is not confined to the old and withered alone. The youngest and fairest are too often its chosen victims.”
— Charles Dickens

100. “The coffee was boiling over a charcoal fire, and large slices of bread and butter were piled one upon the other like deals in a lumber yard.”
— Charles Dickens

101. “Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.”
— Charles Dickens

102. “I am at the moment deaf in the ears, hoarse in the throat, red in the nose, green in the gills, damp in the eyes, twitchy in the joints and fractious in temper from a most intolerable and oppressive cold.”
— Charles Dickens

103. “There is a passion for hunting something deeply implanted in the human breast.”
— Charles Dickens

104. “He did each single thing as if he did nothing else.”
— Charles Dickens

105. “In love of home, the love of country has its rise.”
— Charles Dickens

106. “There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.”
— Charles Dickens

107. “The cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him.”
— Charles Dickens

108. “Change begets change.”
— Charles Dickens

109. “In the majority of cases, conscience is an elastic and very flexible article.”
— Charles Dickens

110. “I find my breath gets short, but it seldom gets longer as a man gets older. I take it as it comes, and make the most of it. That’s the best way, ain’t it?”
— Charles Dickens

111. “Oh Agnes, Oh my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward!”
— Charles Dickens

112. “Many merry Christmases, many happy New Years. Unbroken friendships, great accumulations of cheerful recollections and affections on earth, and heaven for us all.”
— Charles Dickens

113. “Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.”
— Charles Dickens

114. “To have a cricket on the hearth is the luckiest thing in all the world!”
— Charles Dickens

115. “The world belongs to those who set out to conquer it armed with self confidence and good humour.”
— Charles Dickens

116. “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.”
— Charles Dickens

117. “A multitude of people and yet solitude.”
— Charles Dickens

118. “Trifles make the sum of life.”
— Charles Dickens

119. “When you drink of the water, don’t forget the spring from which it flows.”
— Charles Dickens

120. “Oliver Twist has asked for more!”
— Charles Dickens

121. “United metropolitan improved hot muffin and crumpet baking and punctual delivery company.”
— Charles Dickens

122. “Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues – faith and hope.”
— Charles Dickens

123. “I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.”
— Charles Dickens

124. “There wasn’t room to swing a cat there.”
— Charles Dickens

125. “Nothing that we do, is done in vain. I believe, with all my soul, that we shall see triumph.”
— Charles Dickens

126. “Every failure teaches a man something, if he will but learn.”
— Charles Dickens

127. “That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”
— Charles Dickens

128. “There was a piece of ornamental water immediately below the parapet, on the other side, into which Mr. James Harthouse had a very strong inclination to pitch Mr. Thomas Gradgrind Junior.”
— Charles Dickens

129. “Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.”
— Charles Dickens

130. “In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected.”
— Charles Dickens

131. “Spite is a little word, but it represents as strange a jumble of feelings and compound of discords, as any polysyllable in the language.”
— Charles Dickens

132. “And from that hour his poor maimed spirit, only remembering the place where it had broken its wings, cancelled the dream through which it had since groped, and knew of nothing beyond the Marshalsea.”
— Charles Dickens

133. “Reflect upon your present blessings.”
— Charles Dickens

134. “Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.”
— Charles Dickens

135. “What is peace? Is it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely, and gentle, and beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? O yes!”
— Charles Dickens

136. “Discipline must be maintained.”
— Charles Dickens

137. “Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.”
— Charles Dickens

138. “But the mere truth won’t do. You must have a lawyer.”
— Charles Dickens

139. “You have been the last dream of my soul.”
— Charles Dickens

140. “Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.”
— Charles Dickens

141. “They are Man’s and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance and this girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”
— Charles Dickens

142. “I do not know the American gentleman, God forgive me for putting two such words together.”
— Charles Dickens

143. “Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule.”
— Charles Dickens

144. “Remember, to the last, that while there is life there is hope.”
— Charles Dickens

145. “Without strong affection, and humanity of heart, and gratitude to that Being whose code is mercy, and whose great attribute is benevolence to all things that breathe, true happiness can never be attained.”
— Charles Dickens

146. “In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.”
— Charles Dickens

147. “There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.”
— Charles Dickens

148. “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.”
— Charles Dickens

149. “The flowers that sleep by night, opened their gentle eyes and turned them to the day. The light, creation’s mind, was everywhere, and all things owned its power.”
— Charles Dickens

150. “Never say never.”
— Charles Dickens

151. “She writhes under her life. A woman more angry, passionate, reckless, and revengeful never lived.”
— Charles Dickens

152. “The broken heart. You think you will die, but you just keep living, day after day after terrible day.”
— Charles Dickens

153. “Women can always put things in fewest words. Except when it’s blowing up; and then they lengthens it out.”
— Charles Dickens

154. “Do the wise thing and the kind thing too, and make the best of us and not the worst.”
— Charles Dickens

155. “Why am I always at war with myself? Why have I told, as if upon compulsion, what I knew all along I ought to have withheld? Why am I making a friend of this woman beside me, in spite of the whispers against her that I hear in my heart?”
— Charles Dickens

156. “For the rest of his life, Oliver Twist remembers a single word of blessing spoken to him by another child because this word stood out so strikingly from the consistent discouragement around him.”
— Charles Dickens

157. “The first rule of business is: Do other men for they would do you.”
— Charles Dickens

158. “You are in every line I have ever read.”
— Charles Dickens

159. “There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.”
— Charles Dickens

160. “I find the nights long, for I sleep but little, and think much.”
— Charles Dickens

161. “Some people are nobody’s enemies but their own.”
— Charles Dickens

162. “Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend, will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof shuts out the sky.”
— Charles Dickens

163. “Come in, – come in! and know me better, man! I am the Ghost of Christmas Present. Look upon me! You have never seen the like of me before!”
— Charles Dickens

164. “I feel an earnest and humble desire, and shall do till I die, to increase the stock of harmless cheerfulness.”
— Charles Dickens

165. “Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrils carry the day’s wine to La Guillotine.”
— Charles Dickens

166. “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.”
— Charles Dickens

167. “We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me.”
— Charles Dickens

168. “Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.”
— Charles Dickens

169. “Man cannot really improve himself without improving others.”
— Charles Dickens

170. “Such is hope, heaven’s own gift to struggling mortals, pervading, like some subtle essence from the skies, all things both good and bad.”
— Charles Dickens

171. “Quadruped lions are said to be savage, only when they are hungry; biped lions are rarely sulky longer than when their appetite for distinction remains unappeased.”
— Charles Dickens

172. “If I could not walk far and fast, I think I should just explode and perish.”
— Charles Dickens

173. “Now, what I want is Facts.”
— Charles Dickens

174. “We must scrunch or be scrunched.”
— Charles Dickens

175. “Then I’m sorry to say, I’ve eat your pie.”
— Charles Dickens

176. “Love, though said to be afflicted with blindness, is a vigilant watchman.”
— Charles Dickens

177. “Circumstances may accumulate so strongly even against an innocent man, that directed, sharpened, and pointed, they may slay him.”
— Charles Dickens

178. “Don’t you think that any secret course is an unworthy one?”
— Charles Dickens

179. “For your popular rumour, unlike the rolling stone of the proverb, is one which gathers a deal of moss in its wanderings up and down.”
— Charles Dickens

180. “Poverty and oysters always seem to go together.”
— Charles Dickens

181. “Money, says the proverb, makes money. When you have got a little, it is often easy to get more.”
— Charles Dickens

182. “Accidentally consumed five biscuits when I wasn’t paying attention. Those biscuits are wily fellows – they leap in like sugary ninjas.”
— Charles Dickens

183. “The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states.”
— Charles Dickens

184. “The word of a gentleman is as good as his bond; and sometimes better.”
— Charles Dickens

185. “In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.”
— Charles Dickens

186. “I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.”
— Charles Dickens

187. “My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.”
— Charles Dickens

188. “Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seeds of rapacious licence and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.”
— Charles Dickens

189. “I am light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy.”
— Charles Dickens

190. “Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.”
— Charles Dickens

191. “Please, sir, I want some more.”
— Charles Dickens

192. “Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”
— Charles Dickens

193. “I cannot help it; reason has nothing to do with it; I love her against reason-but who would as soon love me for my own sake, as she would love the beggar at the corner.”
— Charles Dickens

194. “Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.”
— Charles Dickens

195. “What are the odds so long as the fire of the soul is kindled at the taper of conviviality, and the wing of friendship never molts a feather?”
— Charles Dickens

196. “When the time comes, let loose a tiger and a devil; but wait for the time with the tiger and the devil chained -not shown- yet always ready.”
— Charles Dickens

197. “My dear if you could give me a cup of tea to clear my muddle of a head I should better understand your affairs.”
— Charles Dickens

198. “I love your daughter fondly, dearly, disninterestedly, devotedly. If ever there were love in the world, I love her.”
— Charles Dickens

199. “He was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset.”
— Charles Dickens

200. “I went away, dear Agnes, loving you. I stayed away, loving you. I returned home, loving you!”
— Charles Dickens