James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
Dickens
A day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self.
Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.
Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on the earth in the night season, and melt away with the first beams of the sun.
Emerge from unnatural solitude, look abroad for wholesome sympathy, bestow and receive.
Every traveller has a home of his own, and he learns to appreciate it the more from his wandering.
Everybody’s business in the social system is to be agreeable.
If a pig could give his mind to anything, he wouldn’t be a pig.
If the weather don’t happen to be good for my work to-day, it’s good for some other man’s, and will come round to me to-morrow.
It is a moral impossibility that any son or daughter of Adam can stand on any ground that mortal treads, and gainsay the healthy tenure on which we hold our existence.
Lord, keep my memory green!
Next to Christmas Day the most pleasant annual epoch in existence is the advent of the New Year.
Nothing is high because it is in a high place, and nothing low because it is in a low one.
Philosophers are only men in armour after all.
Poverty should engender an honest pride, that it may not lead and tempt us to unworthy actions.
Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many—not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
Strip the bishop of his apron, the counsellor of his gown, and the beadle of his cocked hat, what are they? Men, mere men. Dignity, and even holiness too sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.
Such is hope, Heaven’s own gift to struggling mortals; pervading, like some subtle essence from the skies, all things both good and bad.
Take any subject of sorrowful regret, and see with how much pleasure it is associated.
The boy’s story is the best that is ever told.
The day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self.
The electric telegraph will never be a substitute for the face of a man, with his soul in it, encouraging another man to be brave and true.
The word of a gentleman is as good as his bond—sometimes better.
There are shades in all good pictures, but there are lights too, if we choose to contemplate them.
There are very few moments in a man’s existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat.
There is a Sunday conscience as well as a Sunday coat; and those who make religion a secondary concern put the coat and conscience carefully by to put on only once a week.
There is little wisdom in knowing that every man must be up and doing, and that all mankind are made dependent on one another.
There is no other ghost save the ghost of our own childhood, the ghost of our own innocence, the ghost of our own airy belief.
There is nothing innocent or good that dies and is forgotten.
There is nothing little to the truly great in spirit.
There’s something good in all weathers. If it don’t happen to be good for my work to-day, it’s good for some other man’s to-day, and will come round to me to-morrow.
Treachery don’t come natural to beaming youth: but trust and pity, love and constancy, they do.
Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen.
We lie down and rise up with the skeleton, allotted to us for our mortal companion—the phantom of ourselves.
What better time for driving, riding, walking, moving through the air by any means, than a fresh, frosty morning, when hope runs cheerily through the veins with the brisk blood and tingles in the frame from head to foot?
When found, make a note of.
Why is it that we can better bear to part in spirit than in body, and, while we have the fortitude to act farewell, have not the nerve to say it?
Ye men of gloom and austerity, who paint the face of Infinite Benevolence with an eternal frown, read in the everlasting book, wide open to your view, the lesson it would teach. Its pictures are not in black and sombre hues, but bright and glowing tints; its music—save when ye drown it—is not in sighs and groans, but songs and cheerful sounds. Listen to the million voices in the summer air, and find one dismal as your own.