Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Dickens

There is not a manufacturer or tradesman in existence, who would not employ a man who takes a reasonable degree of pride in the appearance of himself and those about him, in preference to a sullen, slovenly fellow, who works doggedly on, regardless of his own clothing and that of his wife and children, and seeming to take pleasure or pride in nothing.

Charles Dickens

Father Time is not always a hard parent and though he tarries for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly upon those who have used him well; making them old men and women inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigor. With such people the gray head is but the impression of the old fellow's hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life.

Charles Dickens

There is nothing--no, nothing--innocent or good, that dies and is forgotten; let us hold to that faith or none. An infant, a prattling child, dying in the cradle, will live again in the better thoughts of those that loved it, and play its part through them in the redeeming actions of the world, though its body be burnt to ashes or drowned in the deep sea.

Charles Dickens

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.

Charles Dickens

It always grieves me to contemplate the initiation of children into the ways of life when they are scarcely more than infants. It checks their confidence and simplicity, two of the best qualities that heaven gives them, and demands that they share our sorrows before they are capable of entering into our enjoyments.

Charles Caleb Colton

How strange it is that we of the present day are constantly praising that past age which our fathers abused, and as constantly abusing that present age, which our children will praise.

Charles Caleb Colton

Religion has treated knowledge sometimes as an enemy, sometimes as a hostage; often as a captive and more often as a child; but knowledge has become of age, and religion must either renounce her acquaintance, or introduce her as a companion and respect her as a friend.

Charles Caleb Colton

Gaming is the child of avarice, but the parent of prodigality.

Charles Caleb Colton

Avarice begets more vices than Priam did children and like Priam survives them all. It starves its keeper to surfeit those who wish him dead, and makes him submit to more mortifications to lose heaven than the martyr undergoes to gain it.

Charles Caleb Colton

No men deserve the title of infidels so little as those to whom it has been usually applied; let any of those who renounce Christianity, write fairly down in a book all the absurdities that they believe instead of it, and they will find that it requires more faith to reject Christianity than to embrace it.

Charles Caleb Colton

Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.

Charles Caleb Colton

In religion as in politics it so happens that we have less charity for those who believe half our creed, than for those who deny the whole of it.

Charles Dickens

There's more of gravey than grave about you, whatever you are!" - Scrooge, referring to Marley's ghost which he believes is a hallucination from food poisoning

Charles Dickens

I verily believe that her not remembering and not minding in the least, made me cry again, inwardly - and that is the sharpest crying of all.

Charles Dickens

Nothing that we do, is done in vain. I believe, with all my soul, that we shall see triumph.

Charles Dickens

It is a silent, shady place, with a paved courtyard so full of echoes, that sometimes I am tempted to believe that faint responses to the noises of old times linger there yet, and that these ghosts of sound haunt my footsteps as I pace it up and down.

Charles Dickens

And 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.

Charles Dickens

It being a remarkable fact in theatrical history, but one long since established beyond dispute, that it is a hopeless endeavor to attract people to a theatre unless they can be first brought to believe that they will never get in.

Benjamin Franklin

Savages we call them because their manners differ from ours.

Arthur Brisbane

The leading characteristic of the savage state is its refusal or avoidance of industry.

Denis Diderot

La poe sie veutquelque chose d'e norme, debarbare et de sauvage. Poetry needs something on the scale of the grand, the barbarous, the savage.

Aleister Crowley

The affiliation clause in our Constitution is a privilege: a courtesy to a sympathetic body. Were you not a Mason, or Co-Mason, you would have to be proposed and seconded, and then examined by savage Inquisitors, and then-probably-thrown out on the garbage heap. Well, no, it's not as bad as that; but we certainly don't want anybody who chooses to apply. Would you do it yourself, if you were on the Committee of a Club? The O.T.O. is a serious body, engaged on a work of Cosmic scope. You should question yourself: what can I contribute?

Andrei Sakharov

I regard the death penalty as a savage and immoral institution that undermines the moral and legal foundations of society. I reject the notion that the death penalty has any essential deterrent effect on potential offenders. I am convinced that the contrary is true - that savagery begets only savagery.

David Gemmell

Do not expect help.' 'One should always hope.' 'Then hope for a handsome savage with kindly ways.

Octavia Butler

I have a huge and savage conscience that won't let me get away with things.

Gore Vidal

Vitriolic really is personal. I am vitriolic. I am savage.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Torture is senseless violence, born in fear... torture costs human lives but does not save them. We would almost be too lucky if these crimes were the work of savages: the truth is that torture makes torturers.