Quote

I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.

Charles Dickens

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Charles Dickens
Age: 58 †
Born: 1812
Born: February 7
Died: 1870
Died: June 9
Author
Editor
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Social Critic
Writer
Landport
Hampshire
Dickens
C.Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens
Boz
Come
Truly
Gradually
Long
Cities
Triumph
Years
Struggle
Wearing
Expiation
Time
Free
Rising
Defeats
People
Evil
Brilliant
Triumphs
Natural
Defeat
Struggles
Making
City
Previous
Beautiful
Birth
Abyss

More quotes by Charles Dickens

Image
There was a piece of ornamental water immediately below the parapet, on the other side, into which Mr. James Harthouse had a very strong inclination to pitch Mr. Thomas Gradgrind Junior.
Charles Dickens
Image
Christmas is a time in which, of all times in the year, the memory of every remediable sorrow, wrong, and trouble in the world around us, should be active with us, not less than our own experiences, for all good.
Charles Dickens
Image
Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.
Charles Dickens
Image
A day wasted on others is not wasted on one's self.
Charles Dickens
Image
... she indulged in melancholy - that cheapest and most accessible of luxuries.
Charles Dickens
Image
It always grieves me to contemplate the initiation of children into the ways of life when they are scarcely more than infants. It checks their confidence and simplicity, two of the best qualities that heaven gives them, and demands that they share our sorrows before they are capable of entering into our enjoyments.
Charles Dickens
Image
and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty children conducting themselves as one, but every child was conducting itself like forty.
Charles Dickens
Image
A modest ring at the bell at length allayed her fears, and Miss Benton, hurrying into her own room and shutting herself up, in order that she might preserve that appearance of being taken by surprise which is so essential to the polite reception of visitors, awaited their coming with a smiling countenance.
Charles Dickens
Image
For nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.
Charles Dickens
Image
Man cannot really improve himself without improving others.
Charles Dickens
Image
Mr. Cruncher... always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it.
Charles Dickens
Image
The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart and differing, have come together on the dark highway, to repair home together and to rest in her bosom.
Charles Dickens
Image
It was a dagger in the haughty father's heart, an arrow in his brain, to see how the flesh and blood he could not disown clung to this obscure stranger, and he sitting by. Not that he cared to whom his daughter turned, or from whom turned away. The swift sharp agony struck through him, as he thought of what his son might do.
Charles Dickens
Image
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
Image
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
Image
There is no substitute for thoroughgoing, ardent, and sincere earnestness.
Charles Dickens
Image
No space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused
Charles Dickens
Image
May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?
Charles Dickens
Image
He was simply and staunchly true to his duty alike in the large case and in the small. So all true souls ever are. So every true soul ever was, ever is, and ever will be. There is nothing little to the really great in spirit.
Charles Dickens
Image
'There may be some, perhaps - I don't know that there are - who abuse his kindness,' said Mr. Wickfield. 'Never be one of those, Trotwood, in anything. He is the least suspicious of mankind and whether that's a merit, or whether it's a blemish, it deserves consideration in all dealings with the Doctor, great or small.
Charles Dickens