“That what we falsely call a religious cry is easily
raised by men who have no religion, and in their daily practices set at nought
the commonest principles of right and wrong; that it is begotten of intolerance
and persecution...all History teaches us.”
Charles Dickens, Preface to Barnaby Rudge, 1848
edition
“Don’t be cross with us
poor vagabonds. People must be amused. They can’t be always a learning, nor yet
they can’t be always a working, they ain’t made for it. You must have us,
Squire. Do the wise thing and the kind thing too, and make the best of us; not
the wurse.”
Charles Dickens, Hard
Times, Chapter III-8 (Translated from Sleary’s lisp)
[Honeythunder’s] “philanthropy was of that gunpowderous sort, that the difference between it and animosity was hard to determine. You were to abolish military force, but first you were to bring all commanding officers who had done their duty to trial by court-marital for that offence, and shoot them. You were to abolish war, but were to make converts by making war upon them, and charging them with loving war as the apple of their eye. You were to have universal concord, and were to get it by eliminating all the people who wouldn’t, or conscientiously couldn’t, be concordant. You were to love your brother as yourself, but after an indefinite interval of maligning him (very much as if you hated him), and calling him all manner of name. Above all things, you were to do nothing in private, or on your own account.”
- The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Chapter 6
“Power (unless it be the power of intellect or virtue) has ever the greatest attraction for the lowest natures..."
- Our Mutual Friend, Chapter III-7
“I wish some well-fed philosopher, whose meat and drink turn gall within him; whose blood is ice, whose heart is iron; could have seen Oliver Twist clutching at the dainty viands that the dog had neglected. I wish he could have witnessed the horrible avidity with which Oliver tor the bits asunder with all the ferocity of famine. There is only one thing I should like better; and that would be to see the Philosopher making the same sort of meal himself, with the same relish.”
Charles Dickens, Oliver
Twist, chapter 4
“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 Tale
of Two Cities
“The most important think in live is to stop saying ‘I wish’ and start saying ‘I will.’ Consider nothing impossible, then treat possibilities as probabilities.”
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
