Charles Dickens

Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.

Poetry makes life what lights and music do the stage.

Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

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

Love, though said to be afflicted with blindness, is a vigilant watchman.

I say to you never involve yourself in debt, and become no man’s surety.

A man must cut down his outgoings and save his incomings if he wants to clear himself; you can’t spend your penny and pay debts with it too. Stint the kitchen if the purse is bare. Don’t believe in any way of wiping out debts except by paying hard cash. Promises make debts, and debts make promises, but promises never pay debts…

Debt is to man what the serpent is to the bird; its eye fascinates, its breath poisons, its coil crushes sinew and bone, its jaw is the pitiless grave.

We all think we’re going to get out of debt.

It takes as much imagination to create debt as to create income.

Debt is the worst poverty.

Promises make debt, and debt makes promises.

Debt that peculiar nexus where money, narrative or story, and religious belief intersect, often with explosive force.

Youth is in danger until it learns to look upon debts as furies.

A creditor is worse than a slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns your dignity, and can command it.

He that dies pays all debts.

One of the greatest disservices you can do a man is to lend him money that he can’t pay back.

There are some debts that can’t be paid with money.

The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay for my American Express bill!

In the long run we shall have to pay our debts at a time that may be very inconvenient for our survival.