Quotes from Books by Charles Dickens: Have a Heart That Never Hardens

Welcome to get a dose of inspiration and book wisdom from another set of book quotes. This time, I’ve collected some thoughts from the literary legacy of Charles Dickens, a prominent English writer and journalist of the 19th century, the author of world-renowned masterpieces of classic fiction including The Pickwick Papers, A Christmas Carol, Oliver…

Quotes from Books by Charles Dickens: Have a Heart That Never Hardens

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It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.

(Charles Dickens)

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I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.

(Charles Dickens)

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Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercises, even over the appearance of external objects. 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.

(Charles Dickens)

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Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart.

(Charles Dickens)

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Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.

(Charles Dickens)

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No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.

(Charles Dickens)

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There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,’ returned the nephew. ‘Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!

(Charles Dickens)

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Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused—in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened—by the recurrence of Christmas. There are people who will tell you that Christmas is not to them what it used to be; that each succeeding Christmas has found some cherished hope, or happy prospect, of the year before, dimmed or passed away; that the present only serves to remind them of reduced circumstances and straitened incomes—of the feasts they once bestowed on hollow friends, and of the cold looks that meet them now, in adversity and misfortune. Never heed such dismal reminiscences. There are few men who have lived long enough in the world who cannot call up such thoughts any day of the year. Then do not select the merriest of the three hundred and sixty-five for your doleful recollections, but draw your chair nearer the blazing fire—fill the glass and send round the song—and if your room be smaller than it was a dozen years ago, or if your glass be filled with reeking punch, instead of sparkling wine, put a good face on the matter, and empty it offhand, and fill another, and troll off the old ditty you used to sing, and thank God it’s no worse.

(Charles Dickens)

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The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.

(Charles Dickens)

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Women can always put things in fewest words. Except when it’s blowing up; and then they lengthens it out.

(Charles Dickens)

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In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.

(Charles Dickens)

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A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!

(Charles Dickens)

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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)

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Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since – on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to displace with your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!

(Charles Dickens)

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Reflect upon your present blessings — of which every man has many — not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

(Charles Dickens)

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I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.

(Charles Dickens)

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Ask no questions, and you’ll be told no lies.

(Charles Dickens)

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A very little key will open a very heavy door.

(Charles Dickens)

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I have been bent and broken, but — I hope — into a better shape.

(Charles Dickens)

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So, I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.

(Charles Dickens)

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My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest.

(Charles Dickens)

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Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.

(Charles Dickens)

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Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their daily pilgrimage through the world.

(Charles Dickens)

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Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort.

(Charles Dickens)

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