After bursting open a door of idiotic obstinacy with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Tellson’s down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop, with two little counters, where the oldest of men made your cheque shake as if the wind rustled it, while they examined the signature by the dingiest of windows, which were always under a shower-bath of mud from Fleet-street, and which were made the dingier by their own iron bars proper, and the heavy shadow of Temple Bar.
When should I awaken the heart within her that was mute and sleeping now?
Mr. Pickwick was no sluggard, and he sprang like an ardent warrior from his tent-bedstead.
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other... every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!
The “sharp female newly-born, and called La Guillotine,” was hardly known to him, or to the generality of people, by name.
My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening.
Well, it is strange that I who gave birth to her, and was a woman then, should be alive and merry now, and she lying there: so cold and stiff! Lord, Lord! – to think of it; it’s as good as a play – as good as a play!
You find us, Copperfield,’ said Mr Micawber, with one eye on Traddles, ’at present established, on what may be designated as a small and unassuming scale; but, you are aware that I have, in the course of my career, surmounted difficulties, and conquered obstacles.
Being a hard sleeper likewise, he divided his time pretty equally between these two recreations, always falling asleep when he had done eating, and always taking another turn at the trencher when he had done sleeping, by which means he grew more corpulent and more drowsy every day of his life.
There is nothing half so green that I know anywhere, as the grass of that churchyard; nothing half so shady as its trees; nothing half so quiet as its tombstones. The sheep are feeding there, when I kneel up, early in the morning, in my little bed in a closet within my mother’s room, to look out at it; and I see the red light shining on the sun-dial, and think within myself, ‘Is the sun-dial glad, I wonder, that it can tell the time again?
My impression is, after many years of consideration, that there never can have been anybody in the world who played worse.
If nothing worse than Ale happens to us, we are well off.
The most important thing in life is to stop saying ‘I wish’ and start saying ‘I will.
Once out of this court, I’ll smash that face of yourn!
We umble ones have got eyes, mostly speaking – and we look out of ’em.
Say a good fellow, if you want a phrase,′ returned Herbert, smiling, and clapping his hand on the back of mine: ’a good fellow, with impetuosity and hesitation, boldness and diffidence, action and dreaming curiously mixed in him.
Having made, at least, this one hit, whatever it might prove to be worth, and no customers coming in to help him to any other, Mr. Barsad paid for what he had drunk, and took his leave: taking occasion to say, in a genteel manner, before he departed, that he looked forward to the pleasure of seeing Monsieur and Madame Defarge again.
Whenever Mr. Snagsby and his conductors are stationary, the crowd flows round, and from its squalid depths obsequious advice heaves up to Mr. Bucket. Whenever they move, and the angry bull’s-eyes glare, it fades away and flits about them up the alleys, and in the ruins, and behind the walls, as before.
There is nothing to apprehend. I belong to Tellson’s Bank. You must know Tellson’s Bank in London. I am going to Paris on business. A crown to drink. I may read this?
I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere.