Lawyers hold that there are two kinds of particularly bad witnesses--a reluctant witness, and a too-willing witness.
Charles DickensThere was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth.
Charles DickensOld Marley was as dead as a doornail. Mind! I don't mean to say that, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. 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 doornail.
Charles DickensWe must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down, Trot!
Charles Dickens