The white face of the winter day came sluggishly on, veiled in a frosty mist; and the shadowy ships in the river slowly changed to black substances; and the sun, blood-red on the eastern marshes behind dark masts and yards, seemed filled with the ruins of a forest it had set on fire. ~ Our Mutual Friend
Our Mutual Friend Quotes
Our Mutual Friend was the last novel Charles Dickens completed before he died. We hope you enjoy this collection of 51 quotes from Our Mutual Friend.
It had grown darker as
It had grown darker as they talked, and the wind was sawing and the sawdust was whirling outside paler windows. The underlying churchyard was already settling into deep dim shade, and the shade was creeping up to the housetops among which they sat. “As if,” said Eugene, “as if the churchyard ghosts were rising.” ~ Our Mutual Friend
“Why am I always at
“Why am I always at war with myself? Why have I told, as if upon compulsion, what I knew all along I ought to have withheld? Why am I making a friend of this woman beside me, in spite of the whispers against her that I hear in my heart?” ~ Our Mutual Friend
“Next,” said Mrs Wilfer with
“Next,” said Mrs Wilfer with a wave of her gloves, expressive of abdication under protest from the culinary throne, “I would recommend examination of the bacon in the saucepan on the fire, and also of the potatoes by the application of a fork. Preparation of the greens will further become necessary if you persist in this unseemly demeanour.” ~ Our Mutual Friend
“I wish you could make
“I wish you could make a friend of me, Lizzie. Do you think you could? I have no more of what they call character, my dear, than a canary-bird, but I know I am trustworthy.” ~ Our Mutual Friend
No one who can read,
No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot. ~ Our Mutual Friend
The Secretary, working in the
The Secretary, working in the Dismal Swamp betimes next morning, was informed that a youth waited in the hall who gave the name of Sloppy. The footman who communicated this intelligence made a decent pause before uttering the name, to express that it was forced on his reluctance by the youth in question, and that if the youth had had the good sense and good taste to inherit some other name it would have spared the feelings of him the bearer. ~ Our Mutual Friend
Day was breaking at Plashwater
Day was breaking at Plashwater Weir Mill Lock. Stars were yet visible, but there was dull light in the east that was not the light of night. The moon had gone down, and a mist crept along the banks of the river, seen through which the trees were the ghosts of trees, and the water was the ghost of water. This earth looked spectral, and so did the pale stars: while the cold eastern glare, expressionless as to heat or colour, with the eye of the firmament quenched, might have been likened to the stare of the dead. ~ Our Mutual Friend
It was a cold hard
It was a cold hard easterly morning when he latched the garden gate and turned away. The light snowfall which had feathered his schoolroom windows on the Thursday, still lingered in the air, and was falling white, while the wind blew black. ~ Our Mutual Friend
“It is a sensation not
“It is a sensation not experienced by many mortals,” said he, “to be looking into a churchyard on a wild windy night, and to feel that I no more hold a place among the living than these dead do, and even to know that I lie buried somewhere else, as they lie buried here. Nothing uses me to it. A spirit that was once a man could hardly feel stranger or lonelier, going unrecognized among mankind, than I feel.” ~ Our Mutual Friend
