Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.
Charles Dickens

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.
Charles Dickens

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Charles Dickens

Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many - not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
Charles Dickens

The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.
Charles Dickens

A day wasted on others is not wasted on one's self.
Charles Dickens

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.
Charles Dickens

Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused - in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened - by the recurrence of Christmas.
Charles Dickens

If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.
Charles Dickens

Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.
Charles Dickens

The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.
Charles Dickens

It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.
Charles Dickens

Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows - and china.
Charles Dickens

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.
Charles Dickens

Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions.
Charles Dickens

There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.
Charles Dickens