There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast. Some men, like bats or owls, have better eyes for the darkness than for the light. We, who have no such optical powers, are better pleased to take our last parting look at the visionary companions of many solitary hours, when the brief sunshine of the world is blazing full upon them.
Charles DickensThe dreams of childhood - it's airy fables, its graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adornments of the world beyond; so good to be believed in once, so good to be remembered when outgrown.
Charles DickensBut, tears were not the things to find their way to Mr. Bumble's soul; his heart was waterproof.
Charles DickensThe earth covered with a sable pall as for the burial of yesterday; the clumps of dark trees, its giant plumes of funeral feathers, waving sadly to and fro: all hushed, all noiseless, and in deep repose, save the swift clouds that skim across the moon, and the cautious wind, as, creeping after them upon the ground, it stops to listen, and goes rustling on, and stops again, and follows, like a savage on the trail.
Charles DickensIf you can't get to be oncommon through going straight, you'll never get to do it through going crooked. So don't tell no more on 'em, Pip, and live well and die happy.
Charles DickensI don't suppose there's a man going, as possesses the fondness for youth that I do. There's youth to the amount of eight hundredpound a-year, at Dotheboys Hall at this present time. I'd take sixteen hundred pound worth, if I could get 'em, and be as fond of every individual twenty pound among 'em as nothing should equal it!
Charles Dickens