Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their daily pilgrimage through the world. ~ Nicholas Nickleby
His wardrobe was extensive–very extensive–not
His wardrobe was extensive–very extensive–not strictly classical perhaps, not quite new, nor did it contain any one garment made precisely after the fashion of any age or time, but everything was more or less spangled; and what can be prettier than spangles! ~ The Pickwick Papers
Tell Wind and Fire where
“Tell Wind and Fire where to stop,” returned madame; “but don’t tell me.” ~ A Tale of Two Cities
Ven you read the speeches
“Ven you read the speeches in the papers, and see as vun gen’lman says of another, ‘the Honourable member, if he vill allow me to call him so’ you vill understand, sir, that that means, ‘if he vill allow me to keep up that ‘ere pleasant and uniwersal fiction.'” ~ Master Humphrey’s Clock
I can see others in
I can see others in the sunlight; I can see our boats' crews and our athletic young men on the glistening water, or speckled with the moving lights of sunlit leaves; but I myself am always in the shadow looking on. Not unsympathetically, – God forbid! – but looking on alone, much as I looked at Sylvia from the shadows of the ruined house, or looked at the red gleam shining through the farmer's windows, and listened to the fall of dancing feet, when all the ruin was dark that night in the quadrangle. ~ George Silverman’s Explanation
For gold conjures up
For gold conjures up a mist about a man, more destructive of all his old senses and lulling to his feelings than the fumes of charcoal. ~ Nicholas Nickleby
The nephew revenges himself for
The nephew revenges himself for this, by holding his breath and terrifying his kinswoman with the dread belief that he has made up his mind to burst. Regardless of whispers and shakes, he swells and becomes discoloured, and yet again swells and becomes discoloured, until the aunt can bear it no longer, but leads him out, with no visible neck, and with his eyes going before him like a prawn's. ~ The Uncommercial Traveller- City of London Churches
Not that I have any
Not that I have any curiosity to hear powerful preachers. Time was, when I was dragged by the hair of my head, as one may say, to hear too many. On summer evenings, when every flower, and tree, and bird, might have better addressed my soft young heart, I have in my day been caught in the palm of a female hand by the crown, have been violently scrubbed from the neck to the roots of the hair as a purification for the Temple, and have then been carried off highly charged with saponaceous electricity, to be steamed like a potato in the unventilated breath of the powerful Boanerges Boiler and his congregation, until what small mind I had, was quite steamed out of me. ~ The Uncommercial Traveller- City of London Churches
It Was One of Those March Days
It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade. ~ Great Expectations
He wore a sprinkling of
He wore a sprinkling of powder upon his head, as if to make himself look benevolent; but if that were his purpose, he would perhaps have done better to powder his countenance also, for there was something in its very wrinkles, and in his cold restless eye, which seemed to tell of cunning that would announce itself in spite of him. ~ Nicholas Nickleby