To be allowed to call her "Dora", to write to her, to dote upon and worship her, to have reason to think that when she was with other people she was yet mindful of me, seemed to me the summit of human ambition - I am sure it was the summit of mine.

I will die here where I have walked. And I will walk here, though I am in my grave. I will walk here until the pride of this house is humbled.

You hear, Eugene?' said Lightwood over his shoulder. 'You are deeply interested in lime.' 'Without lime,' returned that unmoved barrister at law, 'my existence would be unilluminated by a ray of hope.

Train up a fig tree in the way it should go, and when you are old sit under the shade of it.

Mr. and Mrs. Boffin sat staring at mid-air, and Mrs. Wilfer sat silently giving them to understand that every breath she drew required to be drawn with a self-denial rarely paralleled in history.

The expression of a man's face is commonly a help to his thoughts, or glossary on his speech; but the countenance of Newman Noggs, in his ordinary moods, was a problem which no stretch of ingenuity could solve.

He had a certain air of being a handsome man-which he was not; and a certain air of being a well-bred man-which he was not. It was mere swagger and challenge; but in this particular, as in many others, blustering assertion goes for proof, half over the world.