Charles Dickens

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

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.

a most excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so tight in some places and not quite so loose in others.

It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.

"It can't be supposed," said Joe. "Tho' I'm oncommon fond of reading, too."
Are you, Joe?"
Oncommon. Give me," said Joe, "a good book, or a good newspaper, and sit me down afore a good fire, and I ask no better. Lord!" he continued, after rubbing his knees a little, "when you do come to a J and a O, and says you, 'Here, at last, is a J-O, Joe,' how interesting reading is!"

"We went our several ways," said Lady Dedlock, "and had little in common even before we agreed to differ. It is to be regretted, I suppose, but it could not be helped."

He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice favour runs in favour of two.

The important thing is this: to be ready at any moment to sacrifice what you are for what you could become.

No varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.

Don't be afraid! We won't make an author of you, while there's an honest trade to be learnt, or brick-making to turn to.

It's in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.

Think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you.

Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

Ningún hombre sabe, hasta que llega el momento, qué profundidades hay en su interior. Para algunos hombres no llega nunca; dejémoslos descansar y demos gracias. Para mí, tú la has traído, tú la has forzado, y el fondo de ese mar embravecido se ha alzado desde entonces... Te amo. Lo que quieren decir otros hombres cuando usan esa expresión no lo sé; lo que quiero decir yo es que estoy bajo la influencia de una atracción terrible, que he resistido en vano y que me domina. Puedes arrastrarme al fuego, puedes arrastrarme a la horca, puedes arrastrarme a la muerte, puedes arrastrarme a todo aquello que siempre he evitado, puedes arrastrarme a cualquier peligro y cualquier desgracia. A eso y a la confusión de mis pensamientos, que es tal que no valgo para nada, es a lo que me refiero cuando digo que eres mi ruina.

I found every breath of air, and every scent, and every flower and leaf and blade of grass and every passing cloud, and everything in nature, more beautiful and wonderful to me than I had ever found it yet. This was my first gain from my illness. How little I had lost, when the wide world was so full of delight for me.