Martin Chuzzlewit Quotes

“He would make a lovely corpse.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“[S]he stood for some moments gazing at the sisters, with affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.”
― Charles Dickens , Martin Chuzzlewit

“The privileges of the side-table included the small prerogatives of sitting next to the toast, and taking two cups of tea to other people's one.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“if I was a painter, and was to paint the American Eagle, how should I do it?...I should want to draw it like a Bat, for its short-sightedness; like a Bantam. for its bragging; like a Magpie, for its honesty; like a Peacock, for its vanity; like an Ostrich, for putting its head in the mud, and thinking nobody sees it -' ...'And like a Phoenix, for its power of springing from the ashes of its faults and vices, and soaring up anew into the sky!”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“The weather being hot, he had no cravat, and wore his shirt collar wide open; so that every time he spoke something was seen to twitch and jerk up in his throat, like the little hammers in a harpsichord when the notes are struck. Perhaps it was the Truth feebly endeavouring to leap to his lips. If so, it never reached them.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“The loveliest things in life are but shadows; they come and go, and change and fade away…”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“Mr Pinch accordingly, after turning over the leaves of his book with as much care as if they were living and highly cherished creatures, made his own selection, and began to read.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“At length it became high time to remember the first clause of that great discovery made by the ancient philosopher, for securing health, riches, and wisdom; the infallibility of which has been for generations verified by the enormous fortunes constantly amassed by chimney-sweepers and other persons who get up early and go to bed betimes.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“Let us take heed how we laugh without reason, lest we cry with it.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit answered to, in strongest conjuration.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“Martin knew nothing about America, or he would have known perfectly well that if its individual citizens, to a man, are to be believed, it always is depressed, and always is stagnated, and always is at an alarming crisis, and never was otherwise; though as a body, they are ready to make oath upon the Evangelists at any hour of the day or night, that it is the most thriving and prosperous of all countries on the habitable globe.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“When she spoke, Tom held his breath, so eagerly he listened; when she sang, he sat like one entranced. She touched his organ, and from that bright epoch even it, the old companion of his happiest hours, incapable as he had thought of elevation, began a new and deified existence.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“Aye, though he loved her from his soul with such a self denying love as woman seldom wins; he spoke from first to last of Martin.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“With a leer of mingled sweetness and slyness; with one eye on the future, one on the bride, and an arch expression in her face, partly spiritual, partly spirituous, and wholly professional and peculiar to her art; Mrs Gamp rummaged in her pocket again [...]”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“His shoes looked too large; his sleeve looked too long; his hair looked too limp; his features looked too mean; his exposed throat looked as if a halter would have done it good.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“His high spiced wares were made to sell, and they sold; and his thousands of readers could as rationally charge their delight in filth upon him, as a glutton can shift upon his cook the responsibility of his beastly excess.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“My meaning is, that no man can expect his children to respect what he degrades.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“For the same reason that I am not a hoarder of money,' said the old man, 'I am not lavish of it. Some people find their gratification in storing it up; and others theirs in parting with it; but I have no gratification connected with the thing. Pain and bitterness are the only goods it ever could procure for me. I hate it. It is a spectre walking before me through the world, and making every social pleasure hideous.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“All the six hundred and fifty-eight
members in the Commons House of Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; who are strong lovers no doubt, but of their country only, which makes all the difference; for in a passion of that
kind (which is not always returned), it is the custom to use as many words as possible, and express nothing whatever.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“It had more corners in it than the brain of an obstinate man;”
― Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit

“An ancient proverb warns us that we should not expect to find old heads upon young shoulders;”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“Go ye, who rest so placidly upon the sacred Bard who had been young, and when he strung his harp was old, and had never seen the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging their bread; go, Teachers of content and honest pride, into the mine, the mill, the forge, the squalid depths of deepest ignorance, and uttermost abyss of man's neglect, and say can any hopeful plant spring up in air so foul that it extinguishes the soul's bright torch as fast as it is kindled!”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“It's as well to be kind whenever one can;”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“Some people likened him to a direction-post, which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there; but these were his enemies, the shadows cast by his brightness; that was all.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“Ah, that 'if.' But it's of no use to despond. I can but do that, when I have tried everything and failed, and even then it won't serve me much.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“But, like the unanimous resolution of a public meeting, which will oftentimes declare that this or that grievance is not to be borne a moment longer, which is nevertheless borne for a century or two afterwards, without any modification, they only reached in this the conclusion that they were all of one mind.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“Playful -- playful warbler,' said Mr Pecksniff. It may be observed in connection with his calling his daughter a 'warbler,' that she was not at all vocal, but that Mr Pecksniff was in the frequent habit of using any word that occurred to him as having a good sound, and rounding a sentence well without much care for its meaning. And he did this so boldly, and in such an imposing manner, that he would sometimes stagger the wisest people with his eloquence, and make them gasp again.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“Cash-up's a very good expression,' observed Martin, 'when other people don't apply it to you.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“I am, sir,' said Mr Tigg, striking himself upon the breast, 'a premium tulip, of a very different growth and cultivation from the cabbage Slyme, sir.”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

“The four hearse-horses, especially, reared and pranced, and showed their highest action, as if they knew a man was dead, and triumphed in it. "The break us, drive us, ride us; ill-treat, abuse, and maim us for their pleasure—But they die; Hurrah, they die!”
― Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit