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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.

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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
Good for Christmas-time is the ruddy colour of the cloak in which--the tree making a forest of itself for her to trip through, with her basket--Little Red Riding-Hood comes to me one Christmas Eve to give me information of the cruelty and treachery of that dissembling Wolf who ate her grandmother, without making any impression on his appetite, and then ate her, after making that ferocious joke about his teeth. She was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding-Hood, I should have known perfect bliss. But, it was not to be; and there was nothing for it but to look out the Wolf in the Noah's Ark there, and put him late in the procession on the table, as a monster who was to be degraded.
Charles Dickens / quote
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04c. 1841 AD
There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew. "Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, Uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!" Fred, A Christmas Carol.
Charles Dickens / quote
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05c. 1841 AD
Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in!‘I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!’ Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. ‘The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. Oh Jacob Marley! Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this.’” “Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset.” “And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!
Charles Dickens / quote
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06c. 1841 AD
I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.
Charles Dickens / quote
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14c. 1841 AD
It is a dreadful thing to wait and watch for the approach of death; to know that hope is gone, and recovery impossible; and to sit and count the dreary hours through long, long, nights - such nights as only watchers by the bed of sickness know. It chills the blood to hear the dearest secrets of the heart, the pent-up, hidden secrets of many years, poured forth by the unconscious helpless being before you; and to think how little the reserve, and cunning of a whole life will avail, when fever and delirium tear off the mask at last. Strange tales have been told in the wanderings of dying men; tales so full of guilt and crime, that those who stood by the sick person's couch have fled in horror and affright, lest they should be scared to madness by what they heard and saw; and many a wretch has died alone, raving of deeds, the very name of which, has driven the boldest man away.("The Drunkard's Death")
Charles Dickens / quote
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15c. 1841 AD
I should like to ask you: -- Does your childhood seem far off? Do the days when you sat at your mother's knee, seem days of very long ago?" Responding to his softened manner, Mr. Lorry answered: "Twenty years back, yes; at this time of my life, no. For, as I draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in the circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning. It seems to be one of the kind smoothings and preparings of the way. My heart is touched now, by many remembrances that had long fallen asleep, of my pretty young mother (and I so old!), and by many associations of the days when what we call the World was not so real with me, and my faults were not confirmed with me.
Charles Dickens / quote
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