Bleak, dark, and piercing cold, it was a night for the well-housed and fed to draw round the bright fire and thank God they were at home; and for the homeless, starving wretch to lay him down and die. Many hunger-worn outcasts close their eyes in our bare streets, at such times, who, let their crimes have been what they may, can hardly open them in a more bitter world. ~ Oliver Twist
Sad and Sorrowful Quotes
Here’s a collection of sad, sorrowful quotes written by Charles Dickens.
The boy was lying, fast
The boy was lying, fast asleep, on a rude bed upon the floor; so pale with anxiety, and sadness, and the closeness of his prison, that he looked like death; not death as it shows in shroud and coffin, but in the guise it wears when life has just departed; when a young and gentle spirit has, but an instant, fled to Heaven, and the gross air of the world has not had time to breathe upon the changing dust it hallowed. ~ Oliver Twist
Charles Darnay seemed to stand
Charles Darnay seemed to stand in a company of the dead. Ghosts all! The ghost of beauty, the ghost of stateliness, the ghost of elegance, the ghost of pride, the ghost of frivolity, the ghost of wit, the ghost of youth, the ghost of age, all waiting their dismissal from the desolate shore, all turning on him eyes that were changed by the death they had died in coming there. ~ A Tale of Two Cities
I have tried to resign
I have tried to resign myself, and to console myself; and that, I hope, I may have done imperfectly; but what I cannot firmly settle in my mind is, that the end will absolutely come. I hold her hand in mine, I hold her heart in mine, I see her love for me, alive in all its strength. I cannot shut out a pale lingering shadow of belief that she will be spared. ~ David Copperfield
Look round and round upon
Look round and round upon this bare bleak plain, and see even here, upon a winter’s day, how beautiful the shadows are! Alas! it is the nature of their kind to be so. The loveliest things in life, Tom, are but shadows; and they come and go, and change and fade away, as rapidly as these! ~ Martin Chuzzlewit
While the flowers, pale and
While the flowers, pale and unreal in the moonlight, floated away upon the river; and thus do greater things that once were in our breasts, and near our hearts, flow from us to the eternal seas. ~ Little Dorrit
The jovial party broke up
The jovial party broke up next morning. Breakings-up are capital things in our school-days, but in after life they are painful enough. Death, self-interest, and fortune’s changes, are every day breaking up many a happy group, and scattering them far and wide; and the boys and girls never come back again. ~ The Pickwick Papers
“There is prodigious strength,” I
“There is prodigious strength,” I answered him, “in sorrow and despair.” ~ A Tale of Two Cities
She raised me, sat in
She raised me, sat in her chair, and standing me before her, said slowly in a cold, low voice–I see her knitted brow and pointed finger–“Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers.” ~ Bleak House
O blessed Heaven I says
“O blessed Heaven,” I says a crying, “teach me what to say to this broken mortal! I am a poor sinful creetur, and the Judgment is not mine.” ~ Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy
