Quotes from Nicholas Nickleby

“The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“Happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“When I speak of home, I speak of the place where in default of a better--those I love are gathered together; and if that place where a gypsy's tent, or a barn, I should call it by the same good name notwithstanding.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their daily pilgrimage through the world.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“Most men unconsciously judge the world from themselves, and it will be very generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues — faith and hope.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“Gold conjures up a mist about a man, more destructive of all his old senses and lulling to his feelings than the fumes of charcoal.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“Mystery and disappointment are not absolutely indispensable to the growth of love, but they are, very often, its powerful auxiliaries.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human natur.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“...and memory, however sad, is the best and purest link between this world and a better. But come! I'll tell you a story of another kind.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“You cannot stain a black coat”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice favour runs in favour of two.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“What do you mean, Phib?" asked Miss Squeers, looking in her own little glass, where, like most of us, she saw - not herself, but the reflection of some pleasant image in her own brain.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“In journeys, as in life, it is a great deal easier to go down hill than up”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“It was a harder day's journey than yesterday's, for there were long and weary hills to climb; and in journeys, as in life, it is a great deal easier to go down hill than up. However, they kept on, with unabated perseverance, and the hill has not yet lifted its face to heaven that perseverance will not gain the summit of at last.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“Thus two people who cannot afford to play cards for money, sometimes sit down to a quiet game for love.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“Such is hope, Heaven's own gift to struggling mortals; pervading, like some subtle essence from the skies, all things, both good and bad; as universal as death, and more infectious than disease!”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“the United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery Company.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“It's always something, to know you've done the most you could. But, don't leave off hoping, or it's of no use doing anything. Hope, hope to the last!”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“But, there is one broad sky over all the world, and whether it be blue or cloudy, the same heaven beyond”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“If a man would commit an inexpiable offence against any society, large or small, let him be successful. They will forgive any crime except that.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“A horse is a quadruped, and quadruped's latin for beast, as everybody that's gone through grammar knows, or else what's the use in having grammars at all?”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“Such is the sleight of hand by which we juggle with ourselves, and change our very weaknesses into stanch and most magnanimous virtues!”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“And, even now, as he paced the streets, and listlessly looked round on the gradually increasing bustle and preparation for the day, everything appeared to yield him some new occasion for despondency. Last night, the sacrifice of a young, affectionate, and beautiful creature, to such a wretch, and in such a cause, had seemed a thing too monstrous to succeed; and the warmer he grew, the more confident he felt that some interposition must save her from his clutches. But now, when he thought how regularly things went on, from day to day, in the same unvarying round; how youth and beauty died, and ugly griping age lived tottering on; how crafty avarice grew rich, and manly honest hearts were poor and sad; how few they were who tenanted the stately houses, and how many of those who lay in noisome pens, or rose each day and laid them down each night, and lived and died, father and son, mother and child, race upon race, and generation upon generation, without a home to shelter them or the energies of one single man directed to their aid; how, in seeking, not a luxurious and splendid life, but the bare means of a most wretched and inadequate subsistence, there were women and children in that one town, divided into classes, numbered and estimated as regularly as the noble families and folks of great degree, and reared from infancy to drive most criminal and dreadful trades; how ignorance was punished and never taught; how jail-doors gaped, and gallows loomed, for thousands urged towards them by circumstances darkly curtaining their very cradles' heads, and but for which they might have earned their honest bread and lived in peace; how many died in soul, and had no chance of life; how many who could scarcely go astray, be they vicious as they would, turned haughtily from the crushed and stricken wretch who could scarce do otherwise, and who would have been a greater wonder had he or she done well, than even they had they done ill; how much injustice, misery, and wrong, there was, and yet how the world rolled on, from year to year, alike careless and indifferent, and no man seeking to remedy or redress it; when he thought of all this, and selected from the mass the one slight case on which his thoughts were bent, he felt, indeed, that there was little ground for hope, and little reason why it should not form an atom in the huge aggregate of distress and sorrow, and add one small and unimportant unit to swell the great amount.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“What a situation!' cried Miss Squeers; '...What is the reason that men fall in love with me, whether I like it or not, and desert their chosen intendeds for my sake?'
'Because they can't help it, miss,' replied the girl; 'the reason's plain.' (If Miss Squeers were the reason, it was very plain.)”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“You know, there is no language of vegetables, which converts a cucumber into a formal declaration of attachment.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“There are some men who, living with the one object of enriching themselves, no matter by what means, and being perfectly conscious of the baseness and rascality of the means which they will use every day towards this end, affect nevertheless—even to themselves—a high tone of moral rectitude, and shake their heads and sigh over the depravity of the world. Some of the craftiest scoundrels that ever walked this earth, or rather—for walking implies, at least, an erect position and the bearing of a man—that ever crawled and crept through life by its dirtiest and narrowest ways, will gravely jot down in diaries the events of every day, and keep a regular debtor and creditor account with Heaven, which shall always show a floating balance in their own favour. Whether this is a gratuitous (the only gratuitous) part of the falsehood and trickery of such men's lives, or whether they really hope to cheat Heaven itself, and lay up treasure in the next world by the same process which has enabled them to lay up treasure in this—not to question how it is, so it is. And, doubtless, such book-keeping (like certain autobiographies which have enlightened the world) cannot fail to prove serviceable, in the one respect of sparing the recording Angel some time and labour.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“Although, to restless and ardent minds, morning may be the fitting season for exertion and activity, it is not always at that time that hope is strongest or the spirit most sanguine and buoyant. In trying and doubtful positions, youth, custom, a steady contemplation of the difficulties which surround us, and a familiarity with them, imperceptibly diminish our apprehensions and beget comparative indifference, if not a vague and reckless confidence in some relief, the means or nature of which we care not to foresee. But when we come, fresh, upon such things in the morning, with that dark and silent gap between us and yesterday; with every link in the brittle chain of hope, to rivet afresh; our hot enthusiasm subdued, and cool calm reason substituted in its stead; doubt and misgiving revive. As the traveller sees farthest by day, and becomes aware of rugged mountains and trackless plains which the friendly darkness had shrouded from his sight and mind together, so, the wayfarer in the toilsome path of human life sees, with each returning sun, some new obstacle to surmount, some new height to be attained. Distances stretch out before him which, last night, were scarcely taken into account, and the light which gilds all nature with its cheerful beams, seems but to shine upon the weary obstacles that yet lie strewn between him and the grave.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

“He has a very nice face and style, really," said Mrs. Kenwigs.
"He certainly has," added Miss Petowker. "There's something in his appearance quite--dear, dear, what's the word again?"
"What word?" inquired Mr. Lillyvick.
"Why--dear me, how stupid I am!" replied Miss Petowker, hesitating. "What do you call it when lords break off doorknockers, and beat policemen, and play at coaches with other people's money, and all that sort of thing?"
"Aristocratic?" suggested the collector.
"Ah! Aristocratic," replied Miss Petowker; "something very aristocratic about him, isn't there?"
The gentlemen held their peace, and smiled at each other, as who should say, "Well! there's no accounting for tastes;" but the ladies resolved unanimously that Nicholas had an aristocratic air, and nobody caring to dispute the position, it was established triumphantly.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Nicholas Nickleby

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