Home > Work > Dombey and Son

Dombey and Son QUOTES

Dombey and Son QUOTES

1 " Those darling byegone times, Mr Carker,' said Cleopatra, 'with their delicious fortresses, and their dear old dungeons, and their delightful places of torture, and their romantic vengeances, and their picturesque assaults and sieges, and everything that makes life truly charming! How dreadfully we have degenerated! "

― Charles Dickens , Dombey and Son

2 " . . . for not an orphan in the wide world can be so deserted as the child who is an outcast from a living parent's love. "

― Charles Dickens , Dombey and Son

3 " If I dropped a tear upon your hand, may it wither it up! If I spoke a gentle word in your hearing, may it deafen you! If I touched you with my lips, may the touch be poison to you! A curse upon this roof that gave me shelter! Sorrow and shame upon your head! Ruin upon all belonging to you! "

― Charles Dickens , Dombey and Son

4 " That small world, like the great one out of doors, had the capacity of easily forgetting its dead; and when the cook had said she was a quiet-tempered lady, and the housekeeper had said it was the common lot, and the butler had said who'd have thought it, and the housemaid had said she couldn't hardly believe it, and the footman had said it seemed exactly like a dream, they had quite worn the subject out, and began to think their mourning was wearing rusty too. "

― Charles Dickens , Dombey and Son

5 " It would seem as if there never was a book written, or a story told, expressly with the object of keeping boys on shore, which did not lure and charm them to the ocean, as a matter of course. "

― Charles Dickens , Dombey and Son

6 " for not an orphan in the wide world can be so deserted as the child who is an outcast from a living parent's love. "

― Charles Dickens , Dombey and Son

7 " The two commonest mistakes in judgement ... are, the confounding of shyness with arrogance - a very common mistake indeed - and the not understanding that an obstinate nature exists in a perpetual struggle with itself. "

― Charles Dickens , Dombey and Son

8 " Time, consoler of affliction and softener of anger "

― Charles Dickens , Dombey and Son

9 " In this round world of many circles within circles, do we make a weary journey from the high grade to the low, to find at last that they lie close together, that the two extremes touch, and that our journey's end is but our starting-place? "

― Charles Dickens , Dombey and Son

10 " Couldn't something temporary be done with a teapot? "

― Charles Dickens , Dombey and Son

11 " It's this same habit that confirms some of us, who are capable of better things, in Lucifer's own pride and stubbornness - that confirms and deepens others of us in villainy - more of us in indifference - that hardens us from day to day, according to the temper of our clay, like images, and leaves us as susceptible as images to new impressions and convictions. "

― Charles Dickens , Dombey and Son

12 " It may have been characteristic of Mr. Dombey’s pride, that he pitied himself through the child. Not poor me. Not poor widower, confiding by constraint in the wife of an ignorant Hind* who has been working “mostly underground” all his life, and yet at whose door Death had never knocked, and at whose poor table four sons daily sit—but poor little fellow! "

― Charles Dickens , Dombey and Son

13 " Thus, with no one to advise her—for she could advise with no one without seeming to complain against him—gentle Florence tossed on an uneasy sea of doubt and hope; and Mr. Carker, like a scaly monster of the deep, swam down below, and kept his shining eye upon her. "

― Charles Dickens , Dombey and Son

14 " The beautiful lady released her hold of Florence, and pressing her lips once more upon her face, withdrew hurriedly, and joined them. Florence remained standing in the same place: happy, sorry, joyful, and in tears, she knew not how, or how long, but all at once: when her new Mama came back, and took her in her arms again. "

― Charles Dickens , Dombey and Son

15 " Florence lives alone in the great dreary house, and day succeeded day, and still she lived alone; and the blank walls looked down upon her with a vacant stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like mind to stare her youth and beauty into stone.
No magic dwelling-place in magic story, shut up in the heart of a thick wood, was ever more solitary and deserted to the fancy, than was her father's mansion in its grim reality, as it stood lowering on the street: always by night, when lightd were shining from neighbouring windows, a blot upon its scanty brightness; always by day, a frown upon its never-smiling face.
There were not two dragon sentries keeping ward before the gate of this above, as in magic legend are usually found on duty over the wronged innocence imprisoned; but besides a glowering visage, with its thin lips parted wickedly, that surveyed all comers from above the archway of the door, there was a monstrous fantasy of rusty iron, curling and twisting like a petrification of an arbour over threshold, budding in spikes and corkscrew points, and bearing, one on either side, two ominous extinguishers, that seemed to say, 'Who enter here, leave light behind! "

― Charles Dickens , Dombey and Son

16 " With that he turned to go, and walking, bareheaded, to the outside of the little porch, took leave of her with such a happy mixture of unconstrained respect and unaffected interest, as no breeding could have taught, no truth mistrusted, and nothing but a pure and single heart expressed.

Many half-forgotten emotions were awakened in the sister’s mind by this visit. It was so very long since any other visitor had crossed their threshold; it was so very long since any voice of apathy had made sad music in her ears; that the stranger’s figure remained present to her, hours afterwards, when she sat at the window, plying her needle; and his words seemed newly spoken, again and again. He had touched the spring that opened her whole life; and if she lost him for a short space, it was only among the many shapes of the one great recollection of which that life was made. "

― Charles Dickens , Dombey and Son

17 " If you find yourselves in cuttings or in tunnels, don't you play no secret games, Keep your whistles going, and let's know where you are. "

― Charles Dickens , Dombey and Son

18 " Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, from the town, burrowing among the dwellings of men and making the streets hum, flashing out into the meadows for a moment, mining in through the damp earth, booming on in darkness and heavy air, bursting out again into the sunny day so bright and wide; away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, through the fields, through the woods, through the corn, through the hay, through the chalk, through the mould, through the clay, through the rock, among objects close at hand and almost in the grasp, ever flying from the traveller, and a deceitful distance ever moving slowly with him: like as in the track of the remorseless monster, Death! "

― Charles Dickens , Dombey and Son

19 " And there, with an aching void in his young heart, and all outside so cold, and bare, and strange, Paul sat as if he had taken life unfurnished, and the upholsterer were never coming. "

― Charles Dickens , Dombey and Son

20 " It was with extreme difficulty that Nipper, the black-eyed, who looked on steadfastly, contained herself at this crisis, and, until the subsequent departure of Mrs. Chick. But the nursery being at length free of visitors, she made herself some recompense for her late restraint. "

― Charles Dickens , Dombey and Son