Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870) was an English author. In his early years he and his siblings loved to create their own plays, recite poetry, and sing songs. However, his childhood ended abruptly at the age of twelve years when he was sent to work at a shoe blacking factory to help support his family after his father was imprisoned for debt. At the age of fifteen he began work as a clerk at a law firm. He soon became a freelance reporter and then a contributor of fiction to several magazines. He was a prolific writer, most remembered for his novels and short stories.
Quotes by Charles Dickens…
No varnish can hide the grain of the wood… the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.
All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else’s manufacture is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make as good money! An obliging stranger, under pretence of compactly folding up my bank-notes for security’s sake, abstracts the notes and gives me nutshells; but what is his sleight of hand to mine, when I fold up my own nutshells and pass them on myself as notes!
Every failure teaches a man something, if he will learn.
Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself, always.
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for any one else.
I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.
Places lie beyond these where we may live in peace, and be tempted to do no harm. We will take the road that promises to have that end, and we would not turn out of it, if it were a hundred times worse than our fears lead us to expect.
A very little key will open a very heavy door.
It was but imagination, yet imagination had all the terrors of reality; nay, it was worse, for the reality would have come and gone, and there an end, but in imagination it was always coming, and never went away.