Frases de Charles Dickens

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“O moralista é como um sinal de trânsito que indica para onde se pode ir para uma cidade, mas não vai.”

“Possua um coração que nunca endurece, um temperamento que nunca pressiona, e um toque que nunca magoa.”

“Ouvimos sempre dizer que as pessoas más são incapazes de nos encarar firmemente. Não há maior tolice. A desonestidade encarará fria e firmemente a própria honestidade, em plena luz do dia, sempre que houver algum proveito a tirar.”

“Se alguém me ofender, procurarei elevar tão alto a minha alma, de forma que a ofensa não consiga me alcançar!”

“Um homem nunca sabe aquilo de que é capaz até que o tenta fazer.”

“Esta é uma melancólica verdade: que os grandes homens têm também parentes pobres.”

“O coração humano é um instrumento de muitas cordas. O perfeito conhecedor dos homens sabe fazê-las vibrar todas, como um bom músico.”

“Eu sempre pensei em Natal como um tempo bom; um bem, perdão, generosidade, época agradável; uma época em que os homens e mulheres parecem abrir os corações deles
delas espontaneamente, e assim eu digo, Deus abençoe o Natal!”

“O Natal é um tempo de benevolência, perdão, generosidade e alegria. A única época que conheço, no calendário do ano, em que homens e mulheres parecem, de comum acordo, abrir livremente seus corações.”

“A amizade da mulher para com o homem é um beco sem saída, para o qual a empurrou o engano no amor.”

“Honrarei o Natal em meu coração e tentarei conservá-lo durante todo o ano.”

“O coração humano tem cordas que é melhor não tocar”

“Eu honrarei o Natal em meu coração, e tentarei manter o ano todo.”

“Se não existissem más pessoas, não haveria bons advogados.”

“Eu amei contra a razão, contra a promessa, contra a paz, contra a esperança, contra a felicidade, contra todo o desencorajamento que existe.”

“Acidentes acontecem até nas melhores famílias.”

“As nossas piores debilidades e golpes baixos são cometidos, em geral, por causa das pessoas que mais desprezamos.”

“A dor de partir não é nada em comparação com a alegria do reencontro.”

“No mundinho habitado pelas crianças, seja quem for a pessoa que as cria, não há nada que seja percebido com mais clareza, nem sentido com mais profundidade que uma injustiça.”

“Adiante! Pelos caminhos maus, se não houver outros; pelos bons, se for possível. Mas adiante, apesar de todos os obstáculos para conseguir o objetivo.”

“Os vícios são frequentemente virtudes levadas ao extremo.”

“Ninguém é inútil neste mundo ", replicou o Secretário", que alivia o fardo dele para qualquer outra pessoa.”

“Aquele que alivia o fardo do mundo para o outro não é inútil neste mundo.”

“Feliz, feliz Natal, a que faz que nos lembremos das ilusões de nossa infância, recorde-lhe ao avô as alegrias de sua juventude, e lhe transporte ao viajante a sua chaminé e a seu doce lar!”

“Renda anual de vinte libras, despesa de dezanove libras, dezanove xelins e seis pence, resultado: felicidade. Renda anual de vinte libras, despesa anual de vinte libras e seis pence, resultado: miséria.”

“O grande comandante, que parecia pela expressão de seu rosto estar sempre à procura de algo na extrema distância, e não ter qualquer conhecimento oculares de qualquer coisa dentro de dez quilômetros”

“Ninguém pode achar que falhou a sua missão neste mundo, se aliviou o fardo de outra pessoa.”

“Eu acredito que a disseminação do catolicismo é o meio mais horrível de degradação política e social deixado no mundo.”

“Nunca nos devemos envergonhar das nossas lágrimas.”

“Só peço para ser livre. As borboletas são livres.”

“Uma vaga noção de tudo, e um conhecimento de nada.”

“As coisas mais bonitas do mundo são sombras.”

“Névoa por todo lado. Névoa sobre o rio, que flui entre ilhotas e prados verdes; névoa desce o rio, que escorre inquinado entre as filas de barcos e imundície que chega à margem de uma grande (e suja) cidade…”

“Foi o melhor dos tempos, / foi o pior dos tempos, / foi a idade da sabedoria, / foi a idade da tolice, / foi a época da fé, / foi a época da incredulidade, / foi a estação da luz, / foi a estação das trevas, / foi a primavera da esperança, / foi o inverno do desespero / tínhamos tudo diante de nós, tínhamos nada diante de nós.”

“Qualquer pessoa é capaz de ficar alegre e de bom humor quando está bem-vestida.”

“A natureza dá a cada época e estação algumas belezas peculiares; e da manhã até a noite, como do berço ao túmulo, nada mais é que um sucessão de mudanças tão gentis e suaves que quase não conseguimos perceber os seus progressos.”

“A caridade começa em casa e a justiça na porta ao lado.”

“Uma mudança de atitude pode fazer-nos cometer grandes erros em qualquer momento.”

“Bem, cada um por si e Providência por todos nós - como o elefante disse quando dançou entre as galinhas.”

“A dignidade de seu cargo nunca é prejudicada pela ausência de esforços de sua parte para mantê-lo.”

“Se você pudesse ver minhas pernas quando eu tiro minhas botas, você formaria uma idéia do que é uma afeição não correspondida.”

“No amor ao lar, o amor pelo país cresce.”

“Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than the dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by religion.”

“…vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!”

“Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together…”

“It is said that the children of the very poor are not brought up, but dragged up.”

“Compeyson's business was the swindling, hand writing forging, stolen bank-note passing, and such-like. All sorts of traps as Compeyson could set with his head, and keep his own legs out of and get the profits from and let another man in for, was Compeyson's business. He'd no more heart than a iron file he was as cold as death, and he had the head of the Devil afore mentioned.”

“He is a gentleman of strict conscience, disdainful of all littleness and meanness and ready on the shortest notice to die any death you may please to mention rather than give occasion for the least impeachment of his integrity. He is an honourable, obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely prejudiced, perfectly unreasonable man.”

“He is not, as he forcibly remarks, ‘one of those fortunate men who, if they were to dive under one side of a barge stark–naked, would come up on the other with a new suit of clothes on, and a ticket for soup in the waistcoat–pocket:’ neither is he one of those, whose spirit has been broken beyond redemption by misfortune and want. He is just one of the careless, good–for–nothing, happy fellows, who float, cork–like, on the surface, for the world to play at hockey with: knocked here, and there, and everywhere: now to the right, then to the left, again up in the air, and anon to the bottom, but always reappearing and bounding with the stream buoyantly and merrily along.”

“Money and goods are certainly the best of references.”

“Wherever religion is resorted to as a strong drink, and as an escape from the dull, monotonous round of home, those of its ministers who pepper the highest will be the surest to please. They who strew the Eternal Path with the greatest amount of brimstone, and who most ruthlessly tread down the flowers and leaves that grow by the wayside, will be voted the most righteous; and they who enlarge with the greatest pertinacity on the difficulty of getting into heaven will be considered, by all true believers, certain of going there: though it would be hard to say by what process of reasoning this conclusion is arrived at.”

“Oh, dear no, miss," he said. "This is a London particular." I had never heard of such a thing. "A fog, miss," said the young gentleman. "Oh, indeed!”

“We are not rich in the bank, but we have always prospered and we have quite enough. I never walk out with my husband but I hear the people bless him. I never lie down at night, but I know that in the course of that day he has alleviated pain and soothed some fellow creature in the time of need. Is not this to be rich?”

“Time was," he said, "when it was well to watch even your rising little star, and know in what quarter there were clouds, to shadow you if needful. But a planet has arisen, and you are lost in its light.”

“It’s my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.”

“I don't care whether I am a Minx or a Sphinx.”

“The bearings of this observation lays in the application on it.”

“My guiding star always is, Get hold of portable property.”

“I used to sit, think, think, thinking, till I felt as lonesome as a kitten in a wash–house copper with the lid on.”

“If the people at large be not already convinced that a sufficient general case has been made out for Administrative Reform, I think they never can be, and they never will be…. Ages ago a savage mode of keeping accounts on notched sticks was introduced into the Court of Exchequer, and the accounts were kept, much as Robinson Crusoe kept his calendar on the desert island. In the course of considerable revolutions of time, the celebrated Cocker was born, and died; Walkinghame, of the Tutor's Assistant, and well versed in figures, was also born, and died; a multitude of accountants, book-keepers and actuaries, were born, and died. Still official routine inclined to these notched sticks, as if they were pillars of the constitution, and still the Exchequer accounts continued to be kept on certain splints of elm wood called "tallies." In the reign of George III an inquiry was made by some revolutionary spirit, whether pens, ink, and paper, slates and pencils, being in existence, this obstinate adherence to an obsolete custom ought to be continued, and whether a change ought not to be effected.
All the red tape in the country grew redder at the bare mention of this bold and original conception, and it took till 1826 to get these sticks abolished. In 1834 it was found that there was a considerable accumulation of them; and the question then arose, what was to be done with such worn-out, worm-eaten, rotten old bits of wood? I dare say there was a vast amount of minuting, memoranduming, and despatch-boxing on this mighty subject. The sticks were housed at Westminster, and it would naturally occur to any intelligent person that nothing could be easier than to allow them to be carried away for fire-wood by the miserable people who live in that neighbourhood. However, they never had been useful, and official routine required that they never should be, and so the order went forth that they were to be privately and confidentially burnt. It came to pass that they were burnt in a stove in the House of Lords. The stove, overgorged with these preposterous sticks, set fire to the panelling; the panelling set fire to the House of Lords; the House of Lords set fire to the House of Commons; the two houses were reduced to ashes; architects were called in to build others; we are now in the second million of the cost thereof, the national pig is not nearly over the stile yet; and the little old woman, Britannia, hasn't got home to-night…. The great, broad, and true cause that our public progress is far behind our private progress, and that we are not more remarkable for our private wisdom and success in matters of business than we are for our public folly and failure, I take to be as clearly established as the sun, moon, and stars.”

“I am the only child of parents who weighed, measured, and priced everything; for whom what could not be weighed, measured, and priced, had no existence.”

“I want to know what it says," he answered, looking steadily in her face. "The sea Floy, what is it that it keeps on saying?”

“That's the state to live and die in!…R-r-rich!”

“Throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people we most despise.”

“If any one were to ask me what in my opinion was the dullest and most stupid spot on the face of the Earth, I should decidedly say Chelmsford.”

“In love of home, the love of country has its rise.”

“I wish I were Commander in Chief of India. The first thing I would do to strike that Oriental race with amazement (not in the least regarding them as if they lived in the Strand, London, or at Camden Town), should be to proclaim to them in their language, that I considered my Holding that appointment by the leave of God, to mean that I should do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested; and that I begged them to do me the favor to observe that I was there for that purpose and no other, and was now proceeding, which all convenient dispatch and merciful swiftness of execution, to blot it out of mankind and raze it off the face of the earth.”

“Resisting the slow touch of a frozen finger tracing out my spine.”

“No one is useless in this world,' retorted the Secretary, 'who lightens the burden of it for any one else.”

“"Papa is a preferable mode of address," observed Mrs General. "Father is rather vulgar, my dear. The word Papa, besides, gives a pretty form to the lips. Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes, and prism are all very good words for the lips: especially prunes and prism. You will find it serviceable, in the formation of a demeanour, if you sometimes say to yourself in company — on entering a room, for instance — Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, prunes and prism.”

“There is a wisdom of the Head, and … there is a wisdom of the Heart.”