Charles Dickens - biography

Biography

Charles Dickens is best-known for the following films:

Charles Dickens Quotes

“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, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. ”

“The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.”

“There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.”

“There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.”

“Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions.”

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

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

“There are not a few among the disciples of charity who require, in their vocation, scarcely less excitement than the votaries of pleasure in theirs.”

“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.”

“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!”

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

“Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.”

“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. ”

“I do not know the American gentleman, god forgive me for putting two such words together.”

“Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.”

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

“The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.”

“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.”

“Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.”

“When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.”

“If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.”

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

“Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.”

“So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise. ”

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

“We forge the chains we wear in life.”

“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.”

“’Tis love that makes the world go round, my baby.”

“A loving heart is the truest wisdom.”

“I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us. ”

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

“Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”

“Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many - not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”

“The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother.”

“The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.”

“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.”

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

“To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.”

“He had but one eye and the pocket of prejudice runs in favor of two.”

“Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.”

“That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity’s small change in general society.”

“Spring is the time of the year, when it is summer in the sun and winter in the shade. ”

“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.”

“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.”

“I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.”

“It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.”

“Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!”

“There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.”

“A boy’s story is the best that is ever told.”

“A day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self.”

“A man who could build a church, as one may say, by squinting at a sheet of paper.”

“A person who can’t pay gets another person who can’t pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don’t make either of them able to do a walking-match.”

“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! ”

“Accidents will occur in the best regulated families.”

“Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you have him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.”

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

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

“Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.”

“Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows - and china.”

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

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

“Do you spell it with a ‘V’ or a ‘W’?’ inquired the judge. ‘That depends upon the taste and fancy of the speller, my Lord’.”

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

“Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tries, and a touch that never hurts.”

“He would make a lovely corpse.”

“I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.”

“It is a 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. ”

“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. ”

“It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.”

“It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away.”

“It’s my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.”

“Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.”

“May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?”

“Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.”

“No man who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true gentleman in manner. ”

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

“Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are!”

“Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.”

“Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.”

“Tell Wind and Fire where to stop but don’t tell me. ”

“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.”

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

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

“This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in.”

“Train up a fig tree in the way it should go, and when you are old sit under the shade of it.”

“We are so very ’umble.”

“We need never be ashamed of our tears. ”

“With affection beaming out of one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.”

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

For the latest DVDs and books on French cinema...

A-Z