My imagination would never have served me as it has, but for the habit of commonplace, humble, patient, daily, toiling, drudging attention

Poetry's unnat'ral; no man ever talked poetry 'cept a beadle on boxin' day.

Break their hearts my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy. -Miss Havisham

The white face of the winter day came sluggishly on, veiled in a frosty mist; and the shadowy ships in the river slowly changed to black substances; and the sun, blood-red on the eastern marshes behind dark masts and yards, seemed filled with the ruins of a forest it had set on fire.

Rich folks may ride on camels, but it ain't so easy for 'em to see out of a needle's eye.

The cold hoarfrost glistened on the tombstones, and sparkled like rows of gems, among the stone carvings of the old church. The snow lay hard and crisp upon the ground; and spread over the thickly-strewn mounds of earth, so white and smooth a cover, that it seemed as if corpses lay there, hidden only by their winding sheets.

It was a foggy day in London, and the fog was heavy and dark. Animate London, with smarting eyes and irritated lungs, was blinking, wheezing, and choking; inanimate London was a sooty spectre, divided in purpose between being visible and invisible, and so being wholly neither.