Charles Dickens

I found myself with a perseverance worthy of a much better cause.

Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together, as I may say, and one man__ a blacksmith, and one__ a whitesmith, and one__ a goldsmith, and one__ a coppersmith. Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come. If there__ been any fault at all to-day, it__ mine. You and me is not two figures to be together in London; nor yet anywheres else but what is private, and beknown, and understood among friends. It ain__ that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall never see me no more in these clothes. I__ wrong in these clothes. I__ wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off th_ meshes. You won__ find half so much fault in me if you think me in forge dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. You won__ find half so much fault in me if, supposing as you should ever wish to see me, you come and put your head in at the forge window and see Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the old burnt apron, sticking to the old work. I__ awful dull, but I hope I__e beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so God bless you, dear old Pip, old chap, God bless you!

The kind of submission or resignation that he showed, was that of a man who was tired out. I sometimes derived an impression, from his manner or from a whispered word or two which escaped him, that he pondered over the question whether he might have a better man under better circumstances. But he never justified himself by a hint tending that way, or tried to bend the past out of its eternal shape.It happened on two or three occasions in my presence, that his desperate reputation was alluded to by one or other of the people in attendance on him. A smile crossed his face then, and he turned his eyes on me with a trustful look, as if he were confident that I had seen some small redeeming touch in him, even so long ago as when I was a little child. As to all the rest, he was humble and contrite, and I never knew him complain.

There's one thing you may be sure of, Pip," said Joe, after some rumination, "namely, that lies is lies. Howsever they come, they didn't ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, and work round to the same. Don't you tell no more of 'em, Pip. That ain't the way to get out of being common, old chap. And as to being common, I don't make it out at all clear. You are oncommon in some things. You're oncommon small. Likewise you're a oncommon scholar.""No, I am ignorant and backward, Joe.""Why, see what a letter you wrote last night! Wrote in print even! I've seen letters___h! and from gentlefolks!___hat I'll swear weren't wrote in print," said Joe."I have learnt next to nothing, Joe. You think much of me. It's only that.""Well, Pip," said Joe, "be it so or be it son't, you must be a common scholar afore you can be a oncommon one, I should hope!

For the rest of his life, Oliver Twist remembers a single word of blessing spoken to him by another child because this word stood out so strikingly from the consistent discouragement around him.

I believed, from the solitary and thoughtful way in which my mother murmured her song, that she was alone. And I went softly into the room. She was sitting by the fire, suckling an infant, whose tiny hand she held against her neck. Her eyes were looking down upon its face, and she sat singing to it. I was so far right, that she had no other companion. I spoke to her, and she started, and cried out. But seeing me, she called me her dear Davy, her own boy! and coming half across the room to meet me, kneeled down upon the ground and kissed me, and laid my head down on her bosom near the little creature that was nestling there, and put its hand up to my lips. I wish I had died. I wish I had died then, with that feeling in my Heart! I should have been more fit for Heaven than I ever have been since.

When I have come to you, at last (as I have always done), I have come topeace and happiness. I come home, now, like a tired traveller, and findsuch a blessed sense of rest!

It is the most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home.

Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.

Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused__n whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened__y the recurrence of Christmas. There are people who will tell you that Christmas is not to them what it used to be; that each succeeding Christmas has found some cherished hope, or happy prospect, of the year before, dimmed or passed away; that the present only serves to remind them of reduced circumstances and straitened incomes__f the feasts they once bestowed on hollow friends, and of the cold looks that meet them now, in adversity and misfortune. Never heed such dismal reminiscences. There are few men who have lived long enough in the world who cannot call up such thoughts any day of the year. Then do not select the merriest of the three hundred and sixty-five for your doleful recollections, but draw your chair nearer the blazing fire__ill the glass and send round the song__nd if your room be smaller than it was a dozen years ago, or if your glass be filled with reeking punch, instead of sparkling wine, put a good face on the matter, and empty it offhand, and fill another, and troll off the old ditty you used to sing, and thank God it__ no worse.

I work pretty hard for a sufficient living, and therefore _ yes, I do well.

Nothingever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the onset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have a malady in the less attractive forms.

Are you thankful for not being young?''Yes, sir. If I was young, it would all have to be gone through again, and the end would be a weary way off, don't you see?...

I laboured hard at my book, without allowing it to interfere with the punctual discharge of my newspaper duties; and it came out and was very successful. I was not stunned by the praise which sounded in my ears, notwithstanding that I was keenly alive to it, and thought better of my own performance, I have little doubt, than anybody else did. It has always been in my observation of human nature, that a man who has any good reason to believe in himself never flourishes himself before the faces of other people in order that they may believe in him. For this reason, I retained my modesty in very self-respect; and the more praise I got, the more I tried to deserve.

Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better.

Weel, ma´am' said Stephen, making the best of it, with a smile; 'when I ha´finished off, I mun quit this part, and try another. Fortnet or misfortnet, a man can but try; there´s now to be done wi´out tryin -cept laying down and dying.

The fire? It has been alive as long as I have. We talk and think together all night long. It__ like a book to me _ the only book I ever learned to read; and many an old story it tells me. It__ music, for I should know its voice among a thousand, and there are other voices in its roar. It has its pictures too. You don__ know how many strange faces and different scenes I trace in the red-hot coals. It__ my memory, that fire, and shows me all my life.

Mr Pickwick awoke the next morning, there was not a symptom of rheumatism about him; which proves, as Mr Bob Sawyer very justly observed, that there is nothing like hot punch in such cases; and that if ever hot punch did fail to act as a preventive, it was merely because the patient fell in to the vulgar error of not taking enough of it.