''It's my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.''
''"Angel in tights and garters"...''
''"I took a good deal o' pains with his eddication, sir; let him run in the streets when he was wery young, and shift for his-self. It's the only way to make a boy sharp, sir."''
''Battledore and shuttlecock's a wery good game, vhen you an't the shuttlecock and two lawyers the battledores, in which case it gets too exciting to be pleasant.''
''Miss Knag still aimed at youth, although she had shot beyond it, years ago.''
''There was no speculation so promising, or at the same time so praisworthy, as the United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery Company.''
''By the by, who ever knew a man who never read or wrote neither who hadn't got some small back parlour which he would call a study!''
''That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity's small change in general society.''
''A man in public life expects to be sneered at—it is the fault of his elevated sitiwation, and not of himself.''
''Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human natur'.''
''There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.''
''"It's a wery remarkable circumstance, sir", said Sam, "that poverty and oysters seems to go together."''
''It was not exactly a hairdresser's; that is to say, people of a coarse and vulgar turn of mind might have called it a barber's; for they not only cut and curled ladies elegantly, and children carefully, but shaved gentlemen easily.''
''A lady of what is commonly called an uncertain temper—a phrase which being interpreted signifies a temper tolerably certain to make everybody more or less uncomfortable.''
''A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.''
''It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away.''
''There are not a few among the disciples of charity who require, in their vocation, scarcely less excitement than the votaries of pleasure in theirs.''
''It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.''
''There is a passion for hunting something deeply implanted in the human breast.''
''I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here.''
''Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.''
''An inebriated elderly gentleman in the last depths of shabbiness... played the calm and virtuous old men.''
''It was not exactly a hairdresser's; that is to say, people of a coarse and vulgar turn of mind might have called it a barber's; for they not only cut and curled ladies elegantly, and children carefully, but shaved gentlemen easily.''
''Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.''
''The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.''
''"Poetry's unnat'ral; no man ever talked poetry 'cept a beadle on boxin' day, or Warren's blackin' or Rowland's oil, or some o' them low fellows; never you let yourself down to talk poetry, my boy."''
''I never see any difference in boys. I only know two sorts of boys. Mealy boys and beef-faced boys.''
''Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are!''
''Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.''
''"I took a good deal o' pains with his eddication, sir; let him run in the streets when he was wery young, and shift for his-self. It's the only way to make a boy sharp, sir."''
''There are strings in the human heart that had better not be wibrated.''
''It was a good thing to have a couple of thousand people all rigid and frozen together, in the palm of one's hand.''
''Quadruped lions are said to be savage, only when they are hungry; biped lions are rarely sulky longer than when their appetite for distinction remains unappeased.''
''It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.''
''When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.''
''There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.''
''One of the many to whom, from straightened circumstances, a consequent inability to form the associations they would wish, and a disinclination to mix with the society they could obtain, London is as complete a solitude as the plains of Syria.''
''Pale and pinched-up faces hovered about the windows where was tempting food; hungry eyes wandered over the profusion guarded by one thin sheet of brittle glass—an iron wall to them; half-naked shivering figures stopped to gaze at Chinese shawls and golden stuffs of India.''
''May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?''
''It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.''
''It was as true as taxes is. And nothing's truer than them.''
''Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrils carry the day's wine to La Guillotine.''
''Gold conjures up a mist about a man, more destructive of all his old senses and lulling to his feelings than the fumes of charcoal.''
''Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.''
''I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.''
''The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.''
''A baked leg of mutton, with potatoes to correspond.''
''It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.''
''Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.''
''If there were no bad people there would be no good lawyers.''
''The dignity of his office is never impaired by the absence of efforts on his part to maintain it.''
''There are not a few among the disciples of charity who require, in their vocation, scarcely less excitement than the votaries of pleasure in theirs.''
''Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!''
''The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother.''
''"And what about the cash, my existence's jewel?"''
''The very dogs were all asleep, and the flies, drunk with moist sugar in the grocer's shop, forgot their wings and briskness, and baked to death in dusty corners of the window.''
''One of those sound slumbers which, lasting in reality some half hour, seem to the sleeper to have been protracted for three weeks or a month.''
''Three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week, and half a roll on Saturdays.''
''I do not know the American gentleman, God forgive me for putting two such words together.''
''"Avay with melincholly, as the little boy said ven his school-missis died.'''
''We are so very 'umble.''
''We know, Mr. Weller—we, who are men of the world—that a good uniform must work its way with the women, sooner or later.''
''Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.''
''"If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, "the law is a ass—a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience."''
''Gold conjures up a mist about a man, more destructive of all his old senses and lulling to his feelings than the fumes of charcoal.''
''No man ever walked down to posterity with so small a book under his arm.''
''Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.''
''... 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.''
''When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.''
''Keep out of Chancery.... It's being ground to bits in a slow mill; it's being roasted at a slow fire; it's being stung to death by single bees; it's being drowned by drops; it's going mad by grains.''
''Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.''
''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.''
''There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.''
''That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity's small change in general society.''
''A bill... is the most extraordinary locomotive engine that the genius of man ever produced. It would keep on running during the longest lifetime, without ever once stopping of its own accord.''
''Here's the rule for bargains: "Do other men, for they would do you." That's the true business precept.''
''Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.''
''They are so filthy and bestial that no honest man would admit one into his house for a water-closet doormat.''
