Charles Dickens

There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.

Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we’d give blood.

There is a wisdom of the head, and there is a wisdom of the heart.

I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before–more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Think ahead. Don’t let day-to-day operations drive out planning.

It were Happy if we studied Nature more in natural Things; and acted according to Nature; whose rules are few, plain and most reasonable.

Knowledge always demands increase; it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but will afterwards always propagate itself.

The seven deadly sins: Want of money, bad health, bad temper, chastity, family ties, knowing that you know things, and believing in the Christian religion.

It is your character, and your character alone, that will make your life happy or unhappy.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.

We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.

There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it.

Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.

A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as this brain.

Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.

Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters?