Charles Dickens

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

"Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home!"

"Morning drew on apace. The air became more sharp and piercing, as its first dull hue: the death of night, rather than the birth of day: glimmered faintly in the sky. The objects which had looked dim and terrible in the darkness, grew more and more defined, and gradually resolved into their familiar shapes. The rain came down, thick and fast; and pattered, noisily, among the leafless bushes."

"What am I doing? Tearing myself. My usual occupation at most times."

"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’s all right now, Louisa: it’s all right, young Thomas,’ said Mr. Bounderby; ‘you won’t do so any more. I’ll answer for it’s being all over with father. Well, Louisa, that’s worth a kiss, isn’t it?’‘You can take one, Mr. Bounderby,’ returned Louisa, when she had coldly paused, and slowly walked across the room, and p. 18ungraciously raised her cheek towards him, with her face turned away.‘Always my pet; ain’t you, Louisa?’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘Good-bye, Louisa!’He went his way, but she stood on the same spot, rubbing the cheek he had kissed, with her handkerchief, until it was burning red. She was still doing this, five minutes afterwards.‘What are you about, Loo?’ her brother sulkily remonstrated. ‘You’ll rub a hole in your face.’‘You may cut the piece out with your penknife if you like, Tom. I wouldn’t cry!"

"they're so fond of Liberty in this part of the globe, that they buy her and sell her and carry her to market with 'em. They've such a passion for Liberty, that they can't help taking liberties with her."

"When I have come to you, at last (as I have always done), I have come topeace and happiness. I come home, now, like a tired traveller, and findsuch a blessed sense of rest!"

"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."

"Calamity with us, is made an excuse for doing wrong. With them, it is erected into a reason for their doing right. This is really the justice of rich to poor, and I protest against it because it is so."

"The New Testament is the very best book that ever was or ever will be known in the world."

"We have had for breakfast, toasts, cakes, a yorkshire pie, a piece of beef about the size and much the shape of my portmanteau, tea, coffee, ham and eggs..."

"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 walked up and down through life."

"He was rather a low sort of pony. The fact is, he had been originally jobbed out by the day, and he never quite got over his old habits. He was clever in melodrama too, but too broad--too broad. When the mother died, he took the port-wine business.''The port-wine business!' cried Nicholas.'Drinking port-wine with the clown,' said the manager; 'but he was greedy, and one night bit off the bowl of the glass, and choked himself, so his vulgarity was the death of him at last."

"...and who must have had something real about her, or she could not have existed, but it certainly was not her hair, or her teeth, or her figure, or her complexion."

"The carrier's horse was the laziest horse in the world, I should hope, and shuffled along, with his head down, as if he liked to keep people waiting to whom the packages were directed. I fancied, indeed, that he sometimes chuckled audibly over this reflection, but the carrier said he was only troubled with a cough." -Chapter 3"

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

"When ladies as young, and good, and beautiful as you are," replied the girl steadily, "give away your hearts, love will carry you all lengths--even such as you, who have home, friends, other admireres, everything to fill them. When such as I, who have no certain roof but the coffin-lid, and no friend in sickness or death but the hospital nurse, set our rotten hearts on any man, and let him fill the place that has been a blank through all our wretched lives, who can hope to cure us? Pity us, lady--pity us for having only one feeling of the woman left, and for having that turned, by a heavy judgment, from a comfort and a pride, into a new means of violence and suffering."

"He was too well accustomed to suffering, and had suffered too much where he was, to bewail the prospect of change very severely."