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Charles Dickens: Historical photographic portraitHistorical photographic portraitJeremiah Gurney · Public domain

499 collected words

Charles Dickens

Life dates: 1812 AD — 1870 AD

English novelist and journalist whose comic scenes expose how words, institutions and personal claims shape relationships. Identify a fictional speaker before treating a familiar phrase as the writer’s direct advice.

▷ Play this voiceSearch these words ↗Place in time ↗lifewisdomlovefaithtruthhappinessmindwork

Life and writing

Charles Dickens lived from 1812 to 1870. The Dickens Fellowship’s chronology documents his early life in Portsmouth and London, his reporting work and the publication of Pickwick Papers in instalments in 1836–37. The archive’s existing historical author record already carries those lifetime years. This profile adds referenced reading context without changing its identity or merging separate labels. A novelist’s documented life and a character’s dialogue supply different kinds of evidence, so the two are kept distinct.

Chapter I of The Pickwick Papers makes a quarrel disappear through a comic distinction between ordinary and Pickwickian language. Chapter VI places The Ivy Green within an encounter where a listener records the verse. The archive’s short Pickwickian label is a compressed anthology form, not a verbatim sentence from the novel. Its ivy passage keeps the opening four lines and closing couplet while omitting intervening lines from the first stanza. Reading the complete scenes reveals the rhetoric and narrative frame that those shortened selections leave out.

Reading this voice

Read chapters I and VI, noticing who speaks and how the surrounding listeners respond. These checked locations support related reading, while the archive wording and Bartlett source links remain unchanged. The 499 associated entries include 67 historical anthology records and 432 contributor-supplied records whose broader attribution is independently unverified. The linked e-text does not specify its print edition, and lifetime years do not establish dates for the individual excerpts.

Subjects to explore

communicationjudgementfriendshipnature

Words to begin with

Profile sources and editorial notes

Agent-assisted editorial profile, updated 2026-10-05. A human reviewer is not recorded. Biographical context does not independently authenticate every quotation attributed to this person.

  • The Dickens Fellowship — Life of Charles Dickens ↗

    Original limited factual paraphrase and documented lifetime. Modern biography text and images are not reproduced. Profile identity does not independently verify every associated quotation. Checked 2026-10-05.

  • Historical related reading — The Pickwick Papers ↗

    Catalogue US-public-domain declaration and historical English text checked with retained download hashes. Original reading guidance distinguishes fictional voices, anthology provenance and limited passage comparisons. Checked 2026-10-05.

Quotations and sayings

01c. 1841 AD
What images do I associate with the Christmas music as I see them set forth on the Christmas Tree?... An angel, speaking to a group of shepherds in a field; some travelers, with eyes uplifted, following a star; a baby in a manger; a child in a spacious temple, talking with grave men; a solemn figure, with a mild and beautiful face, raising a dead girl by the hand; again, near a city gate, calling back the son of a widow, on his bier, to life; a crowd of people looking through the opened roof of a chamber where he sits, and letting down a sick person on a bed, with ropes; the same, in a tempest, walking on the water to a ship; again, on a sea-shore, teaching a great multitude; again, with a child upon his knee, and other children round; again, restoring sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the deaf, health to the sick, strength to the lame, knowledge to the ignorant; again, dying upon a cross, watched by armed soldiers, a thick darkness coming on, the earth beginning to shake, and only one voice head. "Forgive them, for they know not what they do!
Charles Dickens / quote
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05c. 1841 AD
Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears.
Charles Dickens / quote
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06c. 1841 AD
It is the custom on the stage: in all good, murderous melodramas: to present the tragic and the comic scenes, in as regular alternation, as the layers of red and white in a side of streaky, well-cured bacon. The hero sinks upon his straw bed, weighed down by fetters and misfortunes; and, in the next scene, his faithful but unconscious squire regales the audience with a comic song. We behold, with throbbing bosoms, the heroine in the grasp of a proud and ruthless baron: her virtue and her life alike in danger; drawing forth a dagger to preserve the one at the cost of the other; and, just as our expectations are wrought up to the highest pitch, a whistle is heard: and we are straightway transported to the great hall of the castle: where a grey-headed seneschal sings a funny chorus with a funnier body of vassals, who are free of all sorts of places from church vaults to palaces, and roam about in company, carolling perpetually.Such changes appear absurd; but they are not so unnatural as they would seem at first sight. The transitions in real life from well-spread boards to death-beds, and from mourning weeds to holiday garments, are not a whit less startling; only, there, we are busy actors, instead of passive lookers-on; which makes a vast difference. The actors in the mimic life of the theatre, are blind to violent transitions and abrupt impulses of passion or feeling, which, presented before the eyes of mere spectators, are at once condemned as outrageous and preposterous.
Charles Dickens / quote
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11c. 1841 AD
Now, to be sure, Mrs Varden thought, here is a perfect character. Here is a meek, righteous, thoroughgoing Christian, who, having mastered all these qualities, so difficult of attainment; who, having dropped a pinch of salt on the tails of all the cardinal virtues, and caught them everyone; makes light of their possession, and pants for more morality. For the good woman never doubted (as many good men and women never do), that this slighting kind of profession, this setting so little store by great matters, this seeming to say, ‘I am not proud, I am what you hear, but I consider myself no better than other people; let us change the subject, pray’—was perfectly genuine and true. He so contrived it, and said it in that way that it appeared to have been forced from him, and its effect was marvellous.Aware of the impression he had made—few men were quicker than he at such discoveries—Mr Chester followed up the blow by propounding certain virtuous maxims, somewhat vague and general in their nature, doubtless, and occasionally partaking of the character of truisms, worn a little out at elbow, but delivered in so charming a voice and with such uncommon serenity and peace of mind, that they answered as well as the best. Nor is this to be wondered at; for as hollow vessels produce a far more musical sound in falling than those which are substantial, so it will oftentimes be found that sentiments which have nothing in them make the loudest ringing in the world, and are the most relished.
Charles Dickens / quote
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12c. 1841 AD
They meet again at dinner--again, next day-- again, for many days in succession. Lady Dedlock is always the same exhausted deity, surrounded by worshippers, and terribly liable to be bored to death, even while presiding at her own shrine. Mr. Tulkinghorn is always the same speechless repository of noble confidences, so oddly but of place and yet so perfectly at home. They appear to take as little note of one another as any two people enclosed within the same walls could. But whether each evermore watches and suspects the other, evermore mistrustful of some great reservation; whether each is evermore prepared at all points for the other, and never to be taken unawares; what each would give to know how much the other knows--all this is hidden, for the time, in their own hearts.
Charles Dickens / quote
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13c. 1841 AD
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
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19c. 1841 AD
His message perplexed his mind to that degree that he was fain, several times, to take off his hat to scratch his head. Except on the crown, which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, black hair, standing jaggedly all over it, and growing down hill almost to his broad, blunt nose. It was so like Smith's work, so much more like the top of a strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best of players at leap-frog might have declined him, as the most dangerous man in the world to go over.
Charles Dickens / quote
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23c. 1841 AD
And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart’s content. “As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.
Charles Dickens / quote
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