He was too well accustomed to suffering, and had suffered too much where he was, to bewail the prospect of change very severely.
Don’t be afraid to hear me. Don’t shrink from anything I say. I am like one who died young: all my life might have been.
You do not know what all around you see in Esther Summerson, how many hearts she touches and awakens, what sacred admiration and what love she wins. – Mr. Woodcourt.
You’ve got the key of the street.
Your day is done. Night is coming fast for you.” – Nickolas Nickleby.
I am self-contained and self-reliant; your opinion is nothing to me; I have no interest in you, care nothing for you, and see and hear you with indifference.
Caleb was no sorcerer, but in the only magic art that still remains to us, the magic of devoted, deathless love, Nature had been the mistress of his study; and from her teaching, all the wonder came.
I shall always tell you everything.
Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision.
In a word, it was impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present, from the innermost life of my life.
I have often thought that few people know what secrecy there is in the young, under terror. No matter how unreasonable the terror, so that it be terror.
Personal faintness, and an overpowering personal candour, were the distinguishing features of Mrs Billickin’s organization. She came languishing out from her own exclusive back parlour, with the air of having been expressly brought-to for the purpose, from an accumulation of several swoons.
Because, sir, the way I look at it is that we are all drawing on to the bottom of the hill, whatever age we are, on account of time never standing still for a single moment. So let us always do a kindness, and be over-rejoiced. To be sure!
I believe that virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen,... even if Gargery and Boffin did not speak like gentlemen, they were gentlemen.
Invisible insects of diabolical activity swarm in this place. I am tickled and twitched all over. Mentally, I have now committed a burglary under the meanest circumstances, and the myrmidons of justice are at my heels.
She indulged in melancholy, that cheapest and most accessible of luxuries...
It was a maxim with Foxey- our revered father, gentlemen – ‘Always suspect everybody.
For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. And when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you.
But I am thinking like a lover, or like an ass: which I suppose is pretty nearly the same.
Mrs. Sliderskew was in an ecstasy of delight, rolling her head about, drawing up her skinny shoulders, and wrinkling her cadaverous face into so many and such complicated forms of ugliness, as awakened the unbounded astonishment and disgust even of Mr. Squeers.