He never thought that she saw in him what no one else could see. He never thought that in the whole world there were no other eyes that looked upon him with the same light and strength as hers.
Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
There was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest summer sun might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain.
Sir Leicester is generally in a complacent state, and rarely bored. When he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own greatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man to have so inexhaustible a subject.
Family need not be defined merely as those with whom we share blood, but as those for whom we would give our blood.
There never were greed and cunning in the world yet, that did not do too much, and overreach themselves. It is as certain as death.
We count by changes and events within us. Not by years.
Gradually, he fell into that deep tranquil sleep which ease from recent suffering alone imparts; that calm and peaceful rest which it is pain to wake from. Who, if this were death, would be roused again to all the struggles and turmoils of life; to all its cares for the present; its anxieties for the future; more than all, its weary recollections of the past!
I am not at all respectable, and I don’t want to be. Odd perhaps, but so it is!
Such a number of nights,′ said the girl, with a touch of woman’s tenderness, which communicated something like sweetness of tone, even to her voice; ’such a number of nights as I’ve been patient with you, nursing and caring for you, as if you had been a child: and this the first that I’ve seen you like yourself; you wouldn’t have served me as you did just now, if you’d thought of that, would you? Come, come; say you wouldn’t.
Dear Doctor Manette, I love your daughter fondly, dearly, disinterestedly, devotedly. If ever there were love in the world, I love her. You have loved yourself; let your old love speak for me!
Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.
There never was such a goose.
Don’t say nothin’ wotever about it, ma’am,′ replied Sam. ‘I only assisted natur, ma’am; as the doctor said to the boy’s mother, after he’d bled him to death.
Life is made of ever so many partings welded together... Divisions among such must come, and must be met as they come.
Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
It is a world of disappointment: often to the hopes we most cherish, and hopes that do our nature the greatest honour.
Mr Pickwick awoke the next morning, there was not a symptom of rheumatism about him; which proves, as Mr Bob Sawyer very justly observed, that there is nothing like hot punch in such cases; and that if ever hot punch did fail to act as a preventive, it was merely because the patient fell in to the vulgar error of not taking enough of it.
I have seen enough, too, to know that it is not always the youngest and best who are spared to those that love them; but this should give us comfort rather than sorrow, for Heaven is just, and such things teach us impressively that there is a far brighter world than this, and that the passage to it is speedy.
The gout is a complaint as arises from too much ease and comfort. If ever you’re attacked with the gout, sir, jist you marry a widder as has got a good loud woice, with a decent notion of usin’ it, and you’ll never have the gout agin... I can warrant it to drive away any illness as is caused by too much jollity.