"Dickens" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Dickens and other models served only to teach him his art. "Finally," says Prof. Pattee, "Harte was the parent of the modern form of the short story. It was he who started Kipling and Cable and Thomas Nelson Page. Few indeed have surpassed him in the mechanics ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... his own interest, the captain is noteworthy in constituting, with Ralph Bigod (see page 27), a sketch (possibly unknown to Dickens) for Wilkins Micawber. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... a sample of filial humor much more subtle than that indulged in by Charles Dickens, who pilloried his parents in print, one as Mr. Micawber and the other as Mrs. Nickleby. Dickens told the truth and painted it large, but Francois Arouet dealt in indiscreet fallacy when he endeavored to give his father a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... Russia, imitating the writers of other lands, had painted the Jew as a monstrosity. Pushkin's prisoner, Gogol's traitor, Lermontoff's spy, and Turgenief's Zhid (Jew) were caricatures and libels, equal in acrimony, and not inferior in art, to Shakespeare's Shylock and Dickens's Fagin. But now the best and ablest men of letters signed a protest against such unjust and ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... Dickens. With the 43 Illustrations by Seymour and Phiz, the two Buss Plates, and the 32 Contemporary Onwhyn Plates. ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... the dickens may that be to do with you?" he inquired. "And who may you be to walk aboard ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... he was seeing everything on this walk through the eyes of the Christ. He remembered Scrooge and his journey with the Ghost of Christmas Past in Dickens's Christmas Carol. It was like that. He was seeing the real soul of everybody! He was with the architect of the universe, noting where the work had gone wrong from the mighty plans. He suddenly knew that ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... Charles Dickens came to a large house in Devonshire Terrace, facing York Gate. This was his home for eleven years, during which appeared "Martin Chuzzlewit," "Dombey and Son," "David Copperfield," ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... this most famous of Christmas stories Dickens gives us the very atmosphere of the season with all the contrasts that poverty and wealth, miserliness and charity, the past and the future can suggest. Though he had London in mind, any great industrial center would have served as well, for Dickens was thinking primarily of ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... eleven o'clock, and here we are coming to a charming town, which few travellers have probably visited, and of which that genial and experienced traveller, Charles Dickens, wrote in astonished delight, and where in 1862 he spent his birthday. 'Here I find,' he says, 'a grand place, so very remarkable and picturesque, that it is astonishing how people miss it.' This is old Arras; and I ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... again and continued its apparent occupation of sorting squares of paper into a long, narrow box. In the one glance Laurie gave it, as he returned the other's bow with a casual nod, he decided that the "secretary" was arranging a card-catalogue. But why the dickens should Shaw have a secretary? On the ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... woman who has essayed to depict the slave character has miserably failed, unless inoculated with the genuine spirit of the negro; and even those who have succeeded best have done only moderately well, because they have not had the negro nature. It is reserved to some black Shakspeare or Dickens to lay open the wonderful humor, pathos, poetry, and power which slumber in the negro's soul, and which now and then flash out like the fire ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... hang it all, my good woman!" he exclaimed in English, "don't talk so fast. I only know a smattering of your tongue.—She puzzles me, my dear. It's all tongue.—Who the British Dickens wants to know that your little one is quite well again and strong, at a ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... the youth—"Whoy—what the dickens ails thee, Rover?" said he, rising and following him to the door to learn the cause of his alarm. "What! be they gone again, ey?" for the dog was silent. "What do thee sniffle at, boy? On'y look at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... arranged; buttons sewed on Girl of Eight's boots, string on Girl of Ten's hood, and both dispatched to school, etc. Enter Mrs. A. Draws a long sigh of relief and seats herself at desk. Reads a page of Dickens and a poem or two to attune herself for work. Seizes pen, scribbles erratically a few seconds and ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... my point of view; it's plain enough. You see, when I delight in these things, I think I delight most in my delight in them. It means that I am almost having the kind of feeling the fresh American souls had who landed here thirty years ago and revelled in the resemblance to Dickens's characters they met with in the streets, and were historically thrilled by the places where people's heads were chopped off. Imagine their reflections on Charles I., when they stood in Whitehall gazing on the very spot where that poor last word was uttered—'Remember.' And think of ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of nineteenth-century thought. I must not omit to mention the Jacqueline of Th. Bentzon, and the "Attic" Philosopher of Emile Souvestre, nor the, great names of Loti, Claretie, Coppe, Bazin, Bourget, Malot, Droz, De Massa, and last, but not least, our French Dickens, Alphonse Daudet. I need not add more; the very names of these "Immortals" suffice to commend the series to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... many barriers of language; the new things that had to be said demanded new ways of saying them; homely, grotesque, or sordid life was rendered in sordid, grotesque, and homely terms. Pickwick in 1837 had established the immense vogue of Dickens, the Heroes in 1840 had assured the imposing prestige of Carlyle; and the example of both made for the freest and boldest use of language. Across the Channel the stupendous fabric of the Comedie Humaine ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... Wall Street and its gold behind to go out and starve together. Literally we did that in the days that followed. I had taken to peddling books, an illustrated Dickens issued by the Harpers, but I barely earned enough by it to keep life in us and a transient roof over our heads. I call it transient because it was rarely the same two nights together, for causes which I have explained. In the day Bob made out rather better than I. He could always coax ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... Charles Dickens observes with much truth, that "though seldom read, prefaces are continually written." It may be asked and even wondered, why? I cannot say that I know the exact reason, but it seems to me that they may carry the same weight, in ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... created in the coat or the trowsers, which there is no time to send out to be mended; are the special offices of woman; offices for which her digital mechanism has singularly fitted her.' Apropos of 'Missions:' we perceive that DICKENS understands this vague verbal apology for eccentricity or humbugeousness, if we interpret aright his frail and tearful MODDLE; 'who talked much about people's 'missions,' upon which he seemed to have some private information not ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... used to come every day from Tewkesminster; but I had a few lessons from Mother as well, in drawing, and Greek history, and English literature. We used to read books aloud in the evenings—Shakespeare, or Dickens, or sometimes Tennyson or Wordsworth. We got through a tremendous amount of poetry in the winter, when it was dark early, and we had nothing else to do, except sit by the fire. We read all Marmion and the Idylls of the King and Lalla ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... with the results of investigation and experiment in the Western world. His partiality for English literature in all its branches was extreme. The freshest publications of London found their way to his tables, and he heartily enjoyed the creations of Dickens. ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... folded into an overcoat pocket, for ten thousand dollars; a set of five "art fans," each blade painted by a famous artist and costing forty-three thousand dollars; a crystal cup for eighty thousand; an edition de luxe of the works of Dickens for a hundred thousand; a ruby, the size of a pigeon's egg, for three hundred thousand. In some of these great New York palaces there were fountains which cost a hundred dollars a minute to run; and in the harbour ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... contributing to these pages are the Gesta Romanorum, Il Libro d'Oro, Xenophon, Ovid, Lucian, the Venerable Bede, William of Malmesbury. John of Hildesheim, William Caxton, and the more modern Washington Irving, Hugh Miller, Charles Dickens, and Henry Cabot Lodge; also those immortals, Hans Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, Horace E. ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... are quite right about French women. They are like French dishes, uncommonly well cooked and sent up, but what the dickens they are made of is a mystery. Not but what all womenkind are mysteries, but there are mysteries of godliness and ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... "The dickens! How do I know?" he thought. "An extra one on the saucer, please," he said aloud, with his natural resonance but slightly hushed. And his blue eyes, clear and rather cold and hard, blazed down, in ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... a trick," remarked Jackson, "but, corporal, you havn't told us how the dickens that fellow came there, instead of the bear ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... Story; Hunted Down; The Detective Police, and other Nouvellettes. By Charles Dickens. Philadelphia. T.B. Peterson & Brothers. 12mo. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... of Richter, Thackeray, Dickens, Scott, Eliot, and Victor Hugo. He should know intimately the great verse which involves spiritual problems, and human strife and aspiration,—Milton, Beowulf, Caedmon, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, ballads, sagas, the Arthur-Saga, the Nibelungenlied, Wordsworth, ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... writers there is not even the suggestion of change. Shakespeare is alike in all his works; Calderon and Cervantes are always the same, and this is equally true of our modern authors. The first pages of Dickens, of Tolstoi or of Zola could be inserted among the last, and nobody would be ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... Washington Irving, the Nestor of American writers, tried to keep pace. Both the Harpers and the Putnams did an enormous business in books of all kinds, now that so many Americans had grown rich. Walter Scott's novels were imported for the South in carload lots, while Dickens's numberless volumes found ready sale in the East, thus showing the different ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... disadvantage among folk of talent. Aboard ship you can read and think more than at a university. I've got a parcel for you to take when you go again. Hakluyt's Voyages and a good Marco Polo. And the new book of Mr. Dickens, 'The Haunted Man.' And there's a great new writer you'll not want to miss, by name of Thackeray." And there'd be the Bank of England note, "for fear you might be needing it on a special occasion, and not having it, and feeling bad." Dear ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... you this pretty weather-cocke? M.Pa. I cannot tell what (the dickens) his name is my husband had him of, what do you cal your Knights name sirrah? ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... is kindred to its fertility in the invention of incidents. We can pardon in a portrait-gallery of such extent here and there an ill-drawn figure or a face wanting in expression. With the exception of Scott, and perhaps of Dickens, what writer of prose fiction has created a greater number of characters such as stamp themselves upon the memory so that an allusion to them is well understood in cultivated society? Fielding has drawn ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... Mr. Fish's letter, we must first notice its animus. The manner in which Dickens's two old women are brought in is not only indecorous, but it shows a state of feeling from which nothing but harsh interpretation of every questionable expression of Mr. Motley's was to ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the brown rat. "I always appreciate a friendly word. I'm as hungry as the dickens. Have you something or other you can treat me to? I don't care what: ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... "Who the dickens——" he began; then hastily took off his cap and begged the girl's pardon, to which she could not reply for breathlessness. But he seemed to understand what was needed at once, for, after a swift glance from her to the man who was close at hand now, he ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... for the time. And of our own Christmas so much has been said and sung by better voices, that we may leave it to the feelings and the memories of those who read the fireside tales of Dickens, and are happy in their homes. The many elements which I have endeavoured to recall, mix all of them in the Christmas of the present, partly, no doubt, under the form of vague and obscure sentiment; partly as time-honoured reminiscences, partly as a portion of our own life. But there is one phase ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... What the dickens was it, anyhow? A sort of unearthly fireworks display, or some new explosive experiment? The dancing flames got into his eyes like bits of lighted thistledown blown ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... of yours!" laughed Ned. "But how in the Dickens did Hans ever get to you? How did he know where to go? How did he ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... breeches buoy and all that sort of thing," said Stover, remembering something in Dickens. "I was the only one saved, ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... the Chicago He was a graceful child, Those sacred chickens Just raised the dickens The Vestal Virgins went wild. Whenever the Nervii got nervy He gave them an awful razz They shook is their shoes With the Consular blues ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... enough to see how often this rule is violated. There are fashions of writing. Mr. Dickens, in his wonderful use of exaggerated language, introduced one. And now you can hardly read the court report in a village paper but you find that the ill-bred boy who makes up what he calls its "locals" thinks it is funny to write in such a style ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... perhaps not worth the labour involved. Winspit Quarry and Seacombe Cliff would be passed on the way; between the two are some old guns marking the spot where the East Indiaman Halsewell went down in a fearful storm in January, 1786. This tragedy was immortalized by Charles Dickens in "The Long Voyage." Out of 250 souls only eighty-two were saved by men employed at Winspit Quarry. Some of the passengers are buried in the level plot between ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... "Now, what the dickens can those men be carrying to make such a streak as that? One would suppose that Arizona would have taken all the nonsense out of 'em, but that glimmer must come from bright bits or buckles, or something of the kind, for we haven't a sabre with us. ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... decoration, a great deal more inlay has been given to these reproductions than ever appeared in the original work of the eighteenth century cabinet makers. Simplicity was sacrificed, and veneers, thus used and abused, came to be a term of contempt, implying sham or superficial ornament. Dickens, in one of his novels, has introduced the "Veneer" family, thus stamping the term more strongly on the ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... to books we were moderately well provided with good modern fiction, and very well provided with such authors as Thackeray, Charlotte Bronte, Bulwer-Lytton and Dickens. With all respect to the kind givers of these books, I would suggest that the literature most acceptable to us in the circumstances under which we did most of our reading, that is in Winter Quarters, was the best of the more recent novels, such as Barrie, Kipling, Merriman and Maurice ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... known country on the face of the globe. There was a decided charm about the way in which the firm did business, and the kindly, not to say considerate manner, in which they treated employes, who really deserved it. The two leading members of the firm, in fact, were not insignificant prototypes of Dickens' Cheeryble Brothers (with the exception that they were both married). I verily believe that in an hour's notice a couple of excellent teams could have been picked from the house to make a decent match ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... been sunning myself in Dickens—even in his later and very inferior 'Mutual Friend,' and 'Great Expectations'—Very inferior to his best: but with things better than any one else's best, caricature as they may be. I really must go and worship at Gadshill, as ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... walk upstairs Mr. Beckford would come to me. The servant led the way to the Duchess Drawing Room, opened the door, and on my entering he retired, leaving me alone in this gorgeous apartment, wondering what the dickens I did there. You may suppose I was not a little delighted at this mark of confidence, and spent several minutes examining the pictures till the author of "Vathek" entered, his countenance beaming with good nature and affability. ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... developed. For humour and pathos, for sympathy yet fidelity, for loftiness of tone yet simplicity of style, this charming volume has few superiors. Here and there it reminds us of Mark Twain, anon of Dickens, and often of George Eliot, for the authoress has many of the strong points of all these writers. Such wholesome and bracing literature as this may well find its place in all our homes. It is a tale of a high order, and is a real study of life. It is fresh, breezy, bracing. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... of course I know exactly what you are going to say. You are going to ask: If I am telling you the truth, why the dickens did I not do as I am advising you to do, and bring back a wagon-load of gold with me? My dear chap, I did! That is to say, I got the gold all right. But, unfortunately for me, I had a partner in the expedition, a Boer named Van Raalte, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... Blackwood's Magazine, and of two sonnets for "Friendship's Offering"; or if perchance there were any festering sharp thorn in Mr. Harrison's side in the shape of some distinguished radical, Sir Charles Dilke, or Mr. Dickens, or anybody who had ever said anything against taxation, or the Post Office, or the Court of Chancery, or the Bench of Bishops,—then would Mr. Harrison, if he had full faith in his Chairman, cunningly ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... that my Warwick Lane serial should combine, as far as my powers allowed, the human interest and genial humour of Dickens with the plot-weaving of G. W. R. Reynolds; and, furnished with these broad instructions, I filled my ink bottle, spread out my foolscap, and, on a hopelessly wet afternoon, began my first novel—now known as "The Trail of the Serpent"—but published in Warwick ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... about for a subject, being reminded, as I was, that the subject of the law was unpopular, I turned—as I have often done in the hour of trouble—I turned to my Dickens, and there I found that at any rate in Dickens we have a great literary man who has been impartial in his treatment of lawyers. He has seen both the good and the bad in them, and it occurred to me that my lecture might take the form of dealing with the lawyers of Dickens. I soon ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood
... chagrin, and of something like indignation ran along the line of official mustaches. "Nonsense," "The dickens," "Can't be done," "We can't think of it," broke out several councilmen, in ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... Hillard at the banquet given to Charles Dickens by the "Young Men of Boston," February 1, 1842. The company consisted of about two hundred, among whom were George Bancroft, Washington Allston and Oliver ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... demand, among Scotch ministers, for the Eagle of Meaux. Murray, in his innocence, was startled by the caution of the publisher, who certainly would have been a heavy loser. 'I honestly believe that, if Charles Dickens were now alive and unknown, and were to offer the MS. of Pickwick to an Edinburgh publisher, that sagacious old individual would shake his prudent old head, and refuse (with the utmost politeness) to publish ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... mere party grounds. Its Essays, Poems, and Tales will be furnished by the ablest writers of both Continents. A new Novel, by Mr. GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA, entitled "QUITE ALONE," will, by special arrangement with the Author, appear in the WEEKLY simultaneously with its publication in Mr. DICKENS'S "All the Year Round." The Publishers will see to it that the current Volume shall justify the favorable opinions expressed by the loyal Press upon the Volume which ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... impressed him; but some quality inherent in her upon which he felt disposed to confer the title of genius. That was going far.—Mentally he pulled himself up short.—For wasn't it going altogether too far—absurdly so? What the dickens did this excessive admiration portend? Could he have received the coup de foudre?—He had to-day a fancy for French tags, in reaction from the family's over-powering Englishness.—That wouldn't suit his book in the very least. For in the matters of the affections he held it thriftless, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... selection is taken from A Child's History of England. Much of the history of Alfred is traditional, and it is not at all probable that Dickens's picture is strictly true.] ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... fault to be found in Chesterton's masterly study of Charles Dickens it lies in the fact that in parts of the book the meaning is not always clear, or, rather, it is not always so at a first reading. Whether this may be justly termed a fault depends largely upon what the reader of a ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... very reign of terror set in. All things were sacrificed to the fetish Nature. Old ladies may still be heard to tell how, when they were girls, affectation was not; and, if we verify their assertion in the light of such literary authorities as Dickens, we find that it is absolutely true. Women appear to have been in those days utterly natural in their conduct—flighty, fainting, blushing, gushing, giggling, and shaking their curls. They knew no reserve in the first days of the Victorian ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... After calling upon an expectant mother who showed me her layette, all white and blue, I dream that I go in an old house to a room with blue papered walls, a blue and white spread on the bed and a case of books, one of which is Dickens' Great Expectations. In one old house I find the bulbs of some plant sprouting on a shelf; in another I open the stove and find to my surprise that fire is still there. In still another house I see behind the ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... as a model. Not that any single comparison of the kind can convey the least idea of the complex idiosyncrasy of such a work. There is a substratum of Guide Book and Gil Blas, no doubt, but there are unmistakable streaks of Defoe, of Dumas, and of Dickens, with all his native prejudices and insular predilections strong upon him. A narrative so wide awake amidst a vagrant population of questionable morals and alien race suggests an affinity with Hajji Baba (a ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... the other children's maintenance, and himself returned to Bath, where he added to his friends Sir William Napier (who first found a resemblance to a lion in Landor's features), John Forster, who afterwards wrote his life, and Charles Dickens, who named a child after him and touched off his merrier turbulent side most charmingly as Leonard Boythom in "Bleak House". But his most constant companion was a Pomeranian dog; in dogs indeed he found comfort all his life, right ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... him. I never saw the guy before, but what a voice! No commercials, no scenery, no nothin' except this guy reading. Something different every night, too. Stuff like Dickens and famous writers like that. I never heard a voice like this guy had, you couldn't stop listening. Then you know what he'd do at the end of ...
— The Amazing Mrs. Mimms • David C. Knight
... by natives with a whale-gun. Took us for a whale, don't you see? Whale-gun throws a bomb that explodes inside the whale and kills him. In this case, it exploded against us and raised the very old dickens. Here they come. ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... agreeable thing to be taken possession of, and "put in her proper place," as the Duchess said; made to understand that her own affairs were not so important, after all; and that it was far more essential to hear the charming gossip about the new and most popular Princess of Wales, or the quarrel between Dickens and Thackeray. Yet, after dinner, in the little sitting-room, where the Duchess, in a white gown with great pink bows, fitter for a girl fresh from Confirmation, and her cheeks with their fixed colour, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... social side of life was playing with the officers' work. Nowadays, like Kitchener, he is bent on producing the professional and weeding out the "drawing-room" soldier. No wonder that his favourite authors are those acutest critics of English social life and English foibles, Dickens and Thackeray. The former's "Bleak House" and the latter's "Book of Snobs" are the two books he places ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... Next Wednesday is the anniversary dinner of the Royal Literary Fund Society, held in Freemasons' Hall. Octavian Blewitt, the secretary, offered me a ticket for the ladies' gallery. I should have seen all the great literati and artists gathered in the hall below, and heard them speak; Thackeray and Dickens are always present among the rest. This cannot now be. I don't think all London can afford another sight ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Elizabeth, daughter of John Dekins or Dickens, is recorded in the parish register of All Hallows, Barking, as having taken place on October 22nd. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... celebrated author is very much in vogue now, and is helpful in many ways. For instance, an evening with Dickens is observed in the following way: A number will personate the leading characters in any of Dickens' works, talking only in language and tone suited to the character, the invited guests ascertaining from his ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm
... artist an abnormal character or two. Dostoevsky, however, has created a whole flock of these abnormal characters and watches over them as a hen over her chickens. He invents vicious grotesques as Dickens invents comic grotesques. In The Brothers Karamazov he reveals the malignance of Smerdyakov by telling us that he was one ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... said, is an employment which literature has always approved. From Gay to Hazlitt, from Swift to Dickens, there have been few writers of light touch upon life who have not had a kind eye for the housemaid. There's a passage somewhere in Stevenson for which I have spent an hour's vain hunting, which exactly ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... reaction first appeared in the aesthetic literature. Its first influential representative was Gogol (b. 1808, d. 1852), who may be called, in a certain sense, the Russian Dickens. A minute comparison of those two great humourists would perhaps show as many points of contrast as of similarity, but there is a strong superficial resemblance between them. They both possessed an inexhaustible supply ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... sombre and slimy, Is gifts wot Prowidence most kyindly sends To give hus chaps a chance of perks and pickins; But if the Town's chock-full of "arc" and "glow," With you and me, NAN, it will play the dickens. We must turn 'onest, NAN, and that's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... as this peculiar-looking individual reached the deck and stood staring round him, "what the dickens d'ye want? Who ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... occurs to me is to pronounce it in all words coming to us from the Celtic "stock," and to pass it unsounded in those which are of Latin origin. If this rule be admitted, the pronunciation sanctioned by the pulpit and Mr. Dickens is condemned. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... appearance, as I remember her, was singularly lovely and interesting. In his home circle, Miller was truly a happy man. I may remark, in passing, that this is a feature in Scottish genius. While Shelley, Byron, Bulwer, Dickens, and other English authors, have been wrecked by home difficulties, Scott, Chalmers, Miller, Wilson, and the whole line of Scottish authors, drank deep of domestic felicity. Perhaps this may be explained by the contrast ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... by the sight of what we really could not swallow. Between six and seven, however, occurred that most comprehensive repast, a steamboat tea; after which, and the ceremony of choosing our berths, I betook myself to the reading of "Oliver Twist" till half-past eleven at night. I wonder if Mr. Dickens had any sensible perception of the benedictions which flew to him from the bosom of the broad Chesapeake as I closed his book; I am afraid not. Helen says, "'tis pity well-wishing has no body," so it is that gratitude, admiration, and moral approbation have ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... of Garrick? Eyelids, again. And the eyes of Charles Dickens, that were said to contain the life of fifty men? On the mechanism of the eyelids hung that fifty-fold vitality. "Bacon had a delicate, lively, hazel eye," says Aubrey in his "Lives of Eminent Persons." But nothing ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... trout, a species of char, has been alluded to, and is the only one which affords much sport to the fisherman; it runs to a large size, as has been stated, but does not often take the fly. Its curious name is said to be derived indirectly from Dickens and the time of his tours in the United States, which produced a Dolly Varden craze in hats and some kinds of calico patterns, of which one with pink spots was supposed to be the correct Dolly Varden pattern. On seeing this fish for the first time, some young lady is supposed to have exclaimed ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert
... say to Mr. Dickens, after sitting on the esplanade for fifteen minutes. And again, "That'll do, thank you, Mr. Dickens." At the first command he would seek the sun; at the second he would stay the chair there in ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... manners as was implied in the act of vaulting over a hedgerow. So he gazed in blank wonder at the suddenness of the apparition, more than half inclined to satisfy his curiosity by inquiring of the stranger how the dickens he ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... the dickens doesn't he walk by himself, without wanting a woman always there, to hold ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... beasts trotting after us, we returned to where we had left Juag. Here I had the dickens' own time keeping the female from Juag's throat. Of all the venomous, wicked, cruel-hearted beasts on two worlds, I think a ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... days I had full opportunity to learn what the girl in Dickens' "Little Dorritt" meant when she called the hospital an "'eavenly" place. It was the first time I had ever been admitted, and the change from the horrible mud hole to the rest and comfort of a cell in the hospital was indeed almost "'eavenly." With nothing to do but to read my ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... overtaxed. But the schools are graded, everything cut and dried, the curriculum made by state or county board; and, like the tyrant's bedstead, those too long must be cut off, and those too short must be stretched. All must fit the bedstead. That great story-teller, Charles Dickens, tells the story exactly in his picture of Dr. Blimmer's system of teaching. That poor babe, Paul Dombey, might as well have been fed to an insatiable ogre as to have been placed in the hands of that pompous idiot. And our country ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... you'd probably ruin this Meshed rug. Besides, confound you, the police would think that I shot you. Give me that pistol! Give it to me, I say. You can come in here and rob to your heart's content, but I'm damned if I'll allow you to commit suicide here. That's a little too thick, Smilk. Why the dickens should you worry about that infernal jade? Aren't you going to the penitentiary for fifteen or twenty ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... it is we're right on it. The ranch house isn't more than three miles from here, and if we could have got there we would have been all right. By morning we may be ten miles away, if we let the herd drift, and we'll have a dickens of a time getting the brutes back ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... wish it was me! My old man's missin' me like the dickens, he writes. (She starts to go.) You'll be over to the cottage in a while, won't you? Me 'n' you'll have a game of ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... persons, besides taking several prisoners, among whom were Mrs. Delaney and Mrs. Gowanlock, widows of two of the murdered men, who were released at the close {396} of the rising. Fort Pitt, on the North Saskatchewan, thirty miles from Frog Lake, was abandoned by Inspector Dickens—a son of the novelist—and his detachment of the Mounted Police, on the approach of a large body of Indians under Big Bear. When the news of these outrages reached Ottawa, the government acted with great promptitude. A French Canadian, ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... he assured her. "Say," he added, "where are all your modern novels? You've got Scott and Dickens and Thackeray, of course, and Eliot—yes, and here's Hawthorne and Poe. But I haven't struck anything later than Oliver ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... gateway; majesty followed in his uniform bedizened with gold lace; majesty's wife came next in a hat and feathers, and an ample trained silk gown; the royal imps succeeded; there stood the pageantry of Makin marshalled on its chosen theatre. Dickens might have told how serious they were; how tipsy; how the king melted and streamed under his cocked hat; how he took station by the larger of his two cannons—austere, majestic, but not truly vertical; how the troops huddled, and were ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... your soul you have no soul inside only grey matter because he doesnt know what it is to have one yes when I lit the lamp because he must have come 3 or 4 times with that tremendous big red brute of a thing he has I thought the vein or whatever the dickens they call it was going to burst though his nose is not so big after I took off all my things with the blinds down after my hours dressing and perfuming and combing it like iron or some kind of a thick crowbar standing ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... to gain time while the authorities were putting their heads together, trying to find out "what the dickens" she ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... instance, will be found to have its companion books, both in the same section and even more significantly in other sections. With that idea too, novels like Walter Scott's Ivanhoe and Fortunes of Nigel, Lytton's Harold and Dickens's Tale of Two Cities, have been used as pioneers of history and treated as a sort of holiday history books. For in our day history is tending to grow more documentary and less literary; and "the historian who is a stylist," as one of our contributors, the late Thomas Seccombe, said, "will soon ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... by no means Leigh Hunt's strong point. In this respect, but not otherwise, he may have suggested Skimpole to Charles Dickens. On one of my visits I found him trying to puzzle out the abstruse question of how he should deduct some such sum as thirteen shillings and ninepence from a sovereign. On another occasion I had to pay him ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... simply curious. It may be doubted whether we can in this country show anything so bad as the record furnished by Dickens in describing some of the ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... days she had recurrently wondered what this strange young man would have to say that Dickens and Hugo had not already said. That was the true marvel of it. No matter how many books one read, each was different, as each human being was different. Some had the dignity and the aloofness of a rock in the sea; and others were as the polished pebbles on the sands—one ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... than a religious one, would have been to fix a palace upon the shifting sands . . . Ellen and Fleda are reared, by their truly feminine and natural experiences, into any thing but "strong-minded women," at least if we accept Mr. Dickens's notion of that dreadful order. They are both of velvet softness; of delicate, downcast beauty; of flitting but abundant smiles, and of even too many and ready tears They live in the affections, as the true woman must; yet they cultivate ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... think about it, how it 's all planned out it 's splendid. Nuthin 's done er evah happens, 'dout hit 's somefin' dat 's intended; Don't keer whut you does, you has to, an' hit sholy beats de dickens,— Viney, go put on de kittle, I got ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... a singular history. He was a convict in this prison when Charles Dickens visited it during his first visit ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... ship there was quite an extensive library, especially on Arctic and Antarctic topics, but as it was in the Commander's cabin it was not heavily patronized. In my own cabin I had Dickens' "Bleak House," Kipling's "Barrack Room Ballads," and the poems of Thomas Hood; also a copy of the Holy Bible, which had been given to me by a dear old lady in Brooklyn, N. Y. I also had Peary's books, "Northward Over the Great Ice," and ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... astonishing with what ease and hilarity the English walk. To an American it seems a kind of infatuation. When Dickens was in this country, I imagine the aspirants to the honor of a walk with him were not numerous. In a pedestrian tour of England by an American, I read that, "after breakfast with the Independent minister, he walked with us for six miles out of ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... a dozen years have passed since Mr. Andrew Lang, startled for once out of his customary light-heartedness, asked himself, and his readers, and the ghost of Charles Dickens—all three powerless to answer—whether the dismal seriousness of the present day was going to last forever; or whether, when the great wave of earnestness had rippled over our heads, we would pluck up heart to be merry ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... him. One of these contained a dozen fine hem-stitched pocket handkerchiefs, with the initials of his name beautifully worked in a corner of each. This had been done by Anna, who was very skilful in such dainty arts. The other package consisted of a complete set of Dickens's works, in strong, plain, ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... a ball at the local town hall, where the scrub aristocrats took one end of the room to dance in and the ordinary scum the other. It was a saving in music. Some day an Australian writer will come along who'll remind the critics and readers of Dickens, Carlyle, and Thackeray mixed, and he'll do justice to these little customs of ours in the little settled-district towns of Democratic Australia. This sort of thing came to a head one New Year's Night at Redclay, when ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... of any argument; but this time, for reasons of his own, he turned an unsympathetic and stubborn ear. He was coming to believe very strongly that all this fanciful optimism was so much laughing-gas, with only a passing power, and when the effect wore off there would be the Dickens to pay. He did not want to see Margaret MacLean turn into a bitter-minded woman of the world—stripped of her trust and her dreams. He—all of them—had need of her as she was. Her belief in the ultimate good of things and ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... guide a German Army to Wellingsford? Was he, a modern Guy Fawkes, plotting to blow up the Town Hall while Mayor and Corporation sat in council? He was not the man to utter purely idle threats. What the dickens was he going to do? Something mean and dirty and underhand. I knew his ways, He was always getting the better of somebody. The wise never let him put in a pane of glass without a specification and estimate, and if he had not been by ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... the invalid stubbornly. She turned her head on one side and stared intently at the long plaits of hair which trailed over the pillow—her "Kenwigs" as she had dubbed them, after Charles Dickens's immortal "Miss Kenwigses," who are pictorially represented in short frocks, pantaloons, and tight plaits of hair, secured at the ends ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... little is derived from that of smell or of taste, though we may talk sometimes of an educated palate and an acquired taste. The finer organs of sight and hearing are the chief mediums of humour, but the sense of touch might by education be rendered exquisitely sensitive, and Dickens mentions the case of a girl he met in Switzerland who was blind, deaf, and dumb, but who was constantly laughing. Among infants, also, where very slight complication is required, the sense of humour can be excited by touch. Thus nurses will sing, "Brow brinky, eye winkey, nose noppy, cheek cherry, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... been lost," he said politely, so as not to hurt her feelings and lose his head, "but I'll tell you what"—he added, pointing to a picture of Dickens—"we can call this man ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... name, which flow so imperceptibly through the minds of a generation or a whole century that there is little realization of their novelty. Such a slow-moving current was the humanitarianism which found such vigorous expression in Dickens, the belief in industrial democracy which is being picked up as a theme by novelist after novelist to-day, or the sense of the value of personality and human experience which so intensely characterizes the literature of ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... mellifloous, what then? Don't imagine, my feller-sinners, that the danger's all over,—no, it's only jest begun. Things ahead 's a good deal wuss. Steam 's pooty bad, but 't a'n't a circumstahnce to the blamed grease. 'T's the grease that doos the mischief, an' plays the dickens with human natur'. Down in th' army, they say, biscuits kills more'n bullets; an' it's gospil truth, every word on 't, perticklerly ef the biscuits is hot, an' pooty wal fried up in grease. Fryin' 's the great mortal sin, the parient of all misery. The hull world's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... had, and the manager called up other large places along the shore only to get the same answer—no room. He said there was a family boarding-house some distance along, where we might get in. The woman, a Mrs. Dickens, was a nice landlady and might tuck us in somewhere. Shall we try it?" ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... mind had craved only solid works of the masters. But of late he had turned his attention more to books of romance, for in them he could find more heart satisfaction than in the others. How he revelled in the outstanding characters of Dickens, Scott, Thackeray and Kingsley. But it remained for Charles Reed to completely captivate him in "The Cloister and ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... disposed, Samivel, to go a-marryin' anybody,—no matter who,—just you shut yourself up in your own room, if you've got one, and pison yourself off-hand,"—such was the sententious advice of the elder Weller, as recorded by Charles Dickens in the immortal pages of the Pickwick Papers; and investigation will show that in all literatures, from the earliest times, similar warnings have been uttered to men who contemplated matrimony. A Tuscan proverb says: "in buying horses and in taking a wife, shut your eyes ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... an abiding sense of their own and others insincerity, and test themselves by their willingness to acknowledge their love before God and man. There are many Mildreds but few Mertouns. It is little wonder that Dickens wrote with such enthusiasm of this play that he knew no love like that of Mildred and Mertoun, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... in his eagerness to hear all that was going on, the captain's wrath was directed towards those aft, and he wheeled round and swore at the second-mate, who was on the poop, leaning over the rail, bawling out louder than before:—"What the infernal dickens are ye about thaar, Mister Steenbock? Snakes an' alligators! why, ye'll have us all aback in another minute! Ease her off, ease her off gently; an' hev thet lubber at the wheel relieved; d'ye haar? Ha ain't worth a cuss! Get a man thet ken steer ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... course, I look like the dickens, but who wouldn't? It has been terrible. Weeks and weeks of it. You'll never know what—" She shuddered so violently that he threw his arm about her ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... has been undertaken with the view of supplying the want of a class of books for children, of a vigorous, manly tone, combined with a plain and concise mode of narration. The writings of Charles Dickens have been selected as the basis of the scheme, on account of the well-known excellence of his portrayal of children, and the interests connected with children—qualities which have given his volumes their strongest hold on the hearts of parents. These delineations having thus received the ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... blessed if I can see what in the dickens that revolver of Mainwaring's had to do with the ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... best Christmas story that has appeared since the death of Charles Dickens.... It is an admirably written story, and merits warm welcome ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... Charles Dickens mentions a remarkable impression in his work "Pictures from Italy." "In the foreground was a group of silent peasant girls, leaning over the parapet of the little bridge, looking now up at the sky, now down ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... European Morals," Voltaire's "Philosophical Dictionary," Buechner's "Force and Matter," "The History of the Christian Religion" by Waite; Paine's "Age of Reason," D'Holbach's "System of Nature," and, above all, Shakespeare. Do not forget Burns, Shelley, Dickens ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... you were reading Dickens," said Lucile, her eyes bright with the idea. "Why, that little shop might almost ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... the Victorian age itself that speaks in those rich, interesting, over-crowded books.... Will be remembered as Dickens' ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... profession of play-taster, with its divorcement from reality in the raw. His cry of "romantic claptrap" is merely the reaction of the club armchair to the "drums and tramplings" of the street. It is in fact (he will welcome an allusion to Dickens almost as much as one to Aristotle) the higher Podsnappery. "Thus happily acquainted with his own merit and importance, Mr. Podsnap settled that whatever he put behind him he put out of existence.... The world got up at eight, shaved close at ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill |
