Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England on 7 february 1812.When he was 12, his father was imprisoned because of debt. As a result, he stopped attending school, and he was sent to work in a blacking factory.
He later detailed his experience working in the shoeblacking factory in his novel David Copperfield. The condition and grim experience pushed him to write extensively about the working class of this time, the sufferings people went through. His novel gave a voice to the voiceless and the poor who suffered from oppression.
Dickens was allowed to go back to school after his father was released. Unluckily, at the age of 15 his schooling years were over, and found ajob as an office boy at an attorney.
Dickens started his writing career as a journalist, and wrote for The Morning Chronicle. In April 1836, His novel The Pickwick Papers propulsed him on the literary scene.
Besides the big success he achieved as a novelist, Dickens was known for his opposition to slavery.
He toured the United States and gave lectures against slavery. He was very critical of the North American society and noted all his critical observation in American Notes for General Circulation. His tour of the United States gave him the inspiration to write Martin Chuzzlewit.
Charles Dickens died on June 9 1870.
Charles Dickens is considered as literary genius. His novels and works covered so many critical issues of his times which resonate in our modern world. From education, poverty, slavery to oppression, read our collection of Charles Dickens quotes.
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.
Charles Dickens
The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.
Charles Dickens
The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.
Charles Dickens
The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother.
Charles Dickens
The first rule of business is: Do other men for they would do you.
Charles Dickens
The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.
Charles Dickens
The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.
Charles Dickens
Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many – not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
Charles Dickens
Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human nature.
Charles Dickens
Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.
Charles Dickens
Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.
Charles Dickens
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
‘Tis love that makes the world go round, my baby.
Charles Dickens
Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are!
Charles Dickens
Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.
Charles Dickens
That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity’s small change in general society.
Charles Dickens
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.
Charles Dickens
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.
Charles Dickens
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
You don’t carry in your countenance a letter of recommendation.
Charles Dickens
When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.
Charles Dickens
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
We forge the chains we wear in life.
Charles Dickens
There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.
Charles Dickens
Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!
Charles Dickens
There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.
Charles Dickens
This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in.
Charles Dickens
There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.
Charles Dickens
There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.
Charles Dickens
There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.
Charles Dickens
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.
Charles Dickens
There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.
Charles Dickens
We are so very ‘umble.
Charles Dickens
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
Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he’s well dressed. There ain’t much credit in that.
Charles Dickens
Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.
Charles Dickens
Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.
Charles Dickens
Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.
Charles Dickens
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
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
Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.
Charles Dickens
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.
Charles Dickens
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.
Charles Dickens
Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.
Charles Dickens
Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.
Charles Dickens
Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.
Charles Dickens
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
He had but one eye and the pocket of prejudice runs in favor of two.
Charles Dickens
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’.
Charles Dickens
It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.
Charles Dickens
Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions.
Charles Dickens
May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?
Charles Dickens
Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.
Charles Dickens
Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.
Charles Dickens
It’s my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.
Charles Dickens
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Charles Dickens
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
He would make a lovely corpse.
Charles Dickens
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.
Charles Dickens
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
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
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
If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.
Charles Dickens
I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
Charles Dickens
I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.
Charles Dickens
It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away.
Charles Dickens
A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
Charles Dickens
A day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self.
Charles Dickens
A boy’s story is the best that is ever told.
Charles Dickens
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.
Charles Dickens
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.
Charles Dickens
An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.
Charles Dickens
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.
Charles Dickens
