Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was a celebrated English novelist, born at Landport, Portsmouth. He was son of a navy clerk, latterly in great straits. He was brought up amid hardships, was sent to a solicitor's office as a clerk, learned shorthand, and became a reporter, a post in which he learned much of what afterwards served him as an author. He wrote sketches for the Monthly Magazine under the name of "Boz" in 1834, and the "Pickwick Papers" in 1836-37, which established his popularity. These were succeeded by "Oliver Twist" in 1838, "Nicholas Nickleby" in 1839, and others which it is needless to enumerate, as they are all known wherever the English language is spoken. They were all written with an aim, and as Ruskin witnesses, "he was entirely right in his main drift and purpose in every book he has written," though he thinks we are apt "to lose sight of his wit and insight, because he chooses to speak in a circle of stage fire.... Allowing for his manner of telling them, the things he tells us are always true".Being a born actor, and fain in his youth to become one, he latterly gave public readings from his works, which were immensely popular. "Acted better," says Carlyle, who witnessed one of these performances, "than any Macready in the world; a whole tragic, comic, heroic theatre visible, performing under one hat, and keeping us laughing - in a sorry way some of us thought — the whole night".
The strain proved too much for him. He was seized with a fit at his residence, Gad's Hill, near Rochester, on June 8, 1870, and died the following morning. He was a little man, with clear blue intelligent eyes, a face of most extreme mobility, and a quiet shrewdness of expression.
Wisdom & Quotes
- Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.
- Accidents will occur in the best regulated families.
- Every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.
- It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.
- 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.
- I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.
- It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.
- What I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.
- In this life we want nothing but facts, sir; nothing but facts.
- 'If the law supposes that,' said Mr Bumble — 'the law is an ass — an idiot.'
- 'If a murder, anybody might have done it. Burglary or pocket-picking wanted prenticeship. Not so murder. We were all of us up to that.'
- Mr and Mrs Veneering were bran-new people in a bran-new house in a bran-new quarter of London. Everything about the Veneerings was spick-and-span new. All their furniture was new, all their friends were new, all their servants were new, their plate was new, their carriage was new, their harness was new, their horses were new, their pictures were new, they themselves were new, they were as newly married as was lawfully compatible with having a bran-new baby, and if they had set up a great-grandfather, he would have come in matting from the Pantechnicon, without a scratch upon him, French polished to the crown of his head.
- 'Bah,' said Scrooge, 'Humbug!'
- 'God bless us every one!' said Tiny Tim, the last of all.
Gustave Flaubert