Bleak House

The fashionable intelligence says so for the comfort of the Parisians, and it knows all fashionable things. To know things otherwise were to be unfashionable.

An exhausted composure, a worn-out placidity, an equanimity of fatigue not to be ruffled by interest or satisfaction, are the trophies of her victory.

Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers.

You are different from other children, Esther, because you were not born, like them, in common sinfulness and wrath. You are set apart.

Submission, self-denial, diligent work, are the preparations for a life begun with such a shadow on it.

It is your misfortune!

Nothing could be more precise, exact, and orderly than Greenleaf.

As I began to know more, I taught more, and so in course of time I had plenty to do, which I was very fond of doing because it made the dear girls fond of me.

I often thought of the resolution I had made on my birthday to try to be industrious, contented, and true-hearted and to do some good to some one and win some love if I could; and indeed, indeed, I felt almost ashamed to have done so little and have won so much.

But of course I soon considered that I must not take tears where I was going after all that had been done for me.

He appeared to enjoy beyond everything the sound of his own voice.

the home of such a beautiful young creature should be represented by that dry, official place. The Lord High Chancellor, at his best, appeared so poor a substitute for the love and pride of parents.

It is a good omen for youth, and hope, and beauty when they find themselves in this place, and don’t know what’s to come of it.

I had youth and hope. I believe, beauty. It matters very little now. Neither of the three served or saved me.

She was a pretty, very diminutive, plump woman of from forty to fifty, with handsome eyes, though they had a curious habit of seeming to look a long way off. As if—I am quoting Richard again—they could see nothing nearer than Africa!

The room, which was strewn with papers and nearly filled by a great writing-table covered with similar litter, was, I must say, not only very untidy but very dirty.

She was full of business and undoubtedly was, as she had told us, devoted to the cause.

Everything seemed to be bought and nothing to be sold there.

The purblind day was feebly struggling with the fog when I opened my eyes to encounter those of a dirty-faced little spectre fixed upon me.

All this wasteful, wanton chess-playing IS very strange. To see that composed court yesterday jogging on so serenely and to think of the wretchedness of the pieces on the board gave me the headache and the heartache both together.

They die in prison, though. Their lives, poor silly things, are so short in comparison with Chancery proceedings that, one by one, the whole collection has died over and over again.

I have a presentiment that he WILL mention it the first thing this morning.

We both grub on in a muddle.

I may have been born to be a benefactor to you by sometimes giving you an opportunity of assisting me in my little perplexities.

He is a child, you know!

I don’t regret it therefore.

My steward’s name, in short, is Jarndyce, and he can’t cheat me.

Give him the papers, conversation, music, mutton, coffee, landscape, fruit in the season, a few sheets of Bristol-board, and a little claret, and he asked no more.

She is the child of the universe.

It should be strewn with roses; it should lie through bowers, where there was no spring, autumn, nor winter, but perpetual summer.

The base word money should never be breathed near it!

He had entirely washed his hands of the difficulty, and it had become ours.

we can separate the individual from the pursuit.

The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies!

He was born in the same scrape. I verily believe that the announcement in the newspapers when his mother was confined was ‘On Tuesday last, at her residence in Botheration Buildings, Mrs. Skimpole of a son in difficulties.’

You can’t make HIM responsible. The idea of Harold Skimpole with designs or plans, or knowledge of consequences!

The weather is so very bad down in Lincolnshire that the liveliest imagination can scarcely apprehend its ever being fine again.

The whole seemingly monotonous and uncompanionable half-dozen, stabled together, may pass the long wet hours when the door is shut in livelier communication than is held in the servants’ hall or at the Dedlock Arms,

All things have an end, even houses that people take infinite pains to see and are tired of before they begin to see them.

She had been a lady of a handsome figure and a noble carriage. She never complained of the change; she never spoke to any one of being crippled or of being in pain, but day by day she tried to walk upon the terrace, and with the help of the stone balustrade, went up and down, up and down, up and down, in sun and shadow, with greater difficulty every day.

I will die here where I have walked. And I will walk here, though I am in my grave. I will walk here until the pride of this house is humbled. And when calamity or when disgrace is coming to it, let the Dedlocks listen for my step!

so sure as there is sickness or death in the family, it will be heard then.

As the prospect gradually revealed itself and disclosed the scene over which the wind had wandered in the dark, like my memory over my life, I had a pleasure in discovering the unknown objects that had been around me in my sleep.

It’s about nothing but costs now. We are always appearing, and disappearing, and swearing, and interrogating, and filing, and cross-filing, and arguing, and sealing, and motioning, and referring, and reporting, and revolving about the Lord Chancellor and all his satellites, and equitably waltzing ourselves off to dusty death, about costs.

Equity sends questions to law, law sends questions back to equity; law finds it can’t do this, equity finds it can’t do that; neither can so much as say it can’t do anything, without this solicitor instructing and this counsel appearing for A, and that solicitor instructing and that counsel appearing for B;

All the rest, by some extraordinary means, has melted away.

It is a street of perishing blind houses, with their eyes stoned out, without a pane of glass, without so much as a window-frame, with the bare blank shutters tumbling from their hinges and falling asunder, the iron rails peeling away in flakes of rust, the chimneys sinking in, the stone steps to every door (and every door might be death’s door) turning stagnant green, the very crutches on which the ruins are propped decaying.

These are the Great Seal’s impressions, my dear, all over England—the children know them!

It’s the only name I know for the thing. He is a ward in Chancery, my dear. Kenge and Carboy will have something to say about it; Master Somebody—a sort of ridiculous sexton, digging graves for the merits of causes in a back room at the end of Quality Court, Chancery Lane—will have something to say about it; counsel will have something to say about it; the Chancellor will have something to say about it; the satellites will have something to say about it; they will all have to be handsomely fee’d, all round, about it; the whole thing will be vastly ceremonious, wordy, unsatisfactory, and expensive, and I call it, in general, Wiglomeration.

They threw themselves into committees in the most impassioned manner and collected subscriptions with a vehemence quite extraordinary. It appeared to us that some of them must pass their whole lives in dealing out subscription-cards to the whole post-office directory—shilling cards, half-crown cards, half-sovereign cards, penny cards.

They wanted everything. They wanted wearing apparel, they wanted linen rags, they wanted money, they wanted coals, they wanted soup, they wanted interest, they wanted autographs, they wanted flannel, they wanted whatever Mr. Jarndyce had—or had not.

They were going to raise new buildings, they were going to pay off debts on old buildings, they were going to establish in a picturesque building (engraving of proposed west elevation attached) the Sisterhood of Mediaeval Marys, they were going to give a testimonial to Mrs. Jellyby, they were going to have their secretary’s portrait painted and presented to his mother-in-law, whose deep devotion to him was well known, they were going to get up everything, I really believe, from five hundred thousand tracts to an annuity and from a marble monument to a silver tea-pot.

They seemed to our poor wits, and according to their own accounts, to be constantly polling people by tens of thousands, yet never bringing their candidates in for anything.

It has been noticed. It has been observed that her young family are excluded from participation in the objects to which she is devoted. She may be right, she may be wrong; but, right or wrong, this is not my course with MY young family. I take them everywhere.

My young family are not frivolous; they expend the entire amount of their allowance in subscriptions, under my direction; and they have attended as many public meetings and listened to as many lectures, orations, and discussions as generally fall to the lot of few grown people.

I am aware that it is so prominent as to be discoverable immediately. I lay myself open to detection, I know.

I love hard work; I enjoy hard work. The excitement does me good. I am so accustomed and inured to hard work that I don’t know what fatigue is.

I do not understand what it is to be tired; you cannot tire me if you try!

I hope any one who may read what I write will understand that if these pages contain a great deal about me, I can only suppose it must be because I have really something to do with them and can’t be kept out.

I could not say so, of course, or show that I knew anything about it. On the contrary, I was so demure and used to seem so unconscious that sometimes I considered within myself while I was sitting at work whether I was not growing quite deceitful.

the innocent manner in which they relied more and more upon me as they took more and more to one another was so charming that I had great difficulty in not showing how it interested me.

I only wish I had the command of a clipping privateer to begin with and could carry off the Chancellor and keep him on short allowance until he gave judgment in our cause.

What the poor are to the poor is little known, excepting to themselves and God.

The sound of the familiar voice seemed to calm her again. She was quiet once more.

a penny saved is a penny got!

He has never since been what he might have been

He is always in extremes, perpetually in the superlative degree.

Talking, laughing, or snoring, they make the beams of the house shake.

To hear him say all this with unimaginable energy, one might have thought him the angriest of mankind. To see him at the very same time, looking at the bird now perched upon his thumb and softly smoothing its feathers with his forefinger, one might have thought him the gentlest.

I would have had that fellow shot without the least remorse!

The soul recoils from food at such a moment, miss.

I have walked up and down of an evening opposite Jellyby’s house only to look upon the bricks that once contained thee.

He is a mild, bald, timid man with a shining head and a scrubby clump of black hair sticking out at the back.

Mr. Snagsby refers everything not in the practical mysteries of the business to Mrs. Snagsby.

He is a great reservoir of confidences, not to be so tapped.

Nemo is Latin for no one.

He has purchased opium of me for the last year and a half. Was anybody present related to him?

As easily might the tone of a delicate musical instrument be inferred from its case, as the tone of Mr. Tulkinghorn from his case.

The general feeling seems to be that it’s a blessing Mr. Krook warn’t made away with first, mingled with a little natural disappointment that he was not.

And all that night the coffin stands ready by the old portmanteau; and the lonely figure on the bed, whose path in life has lain through five and forty years, lies there with no more track behind him that any one can trace than a deserted infant.

The smell of sawdust, beer, tobacco-smoke, and spirits is inseparable in his vocation from death in its most awful shapes.

It is anything but a night of rest at Mr. Snagsby’s, in Cook’s Court, where Guster murders sleep by going, as Mr. Snagsby himself allows—not to put too fine a point upon it—out of one fit into twenty.

with every villainy of life in action close on death, and every poisonous element of death in action close on life—here they lower our dear brother down a foot or two, here sow him in corruption, to be raised in corruption:

She cannot, therefore, go too fast from Paris. Weariness of soul lies before her, as it lies behind—her Ariel has put a girdle of it round the whole earth, and it cannot be unclasped—but the imperfect remedy is always to fly from the last place where it has been experienced.

It is a considerable advantage to a man to have so inexhaustible a subject.

The sea has no appreciation of great men, but knocks them about like the small fry.

There is something indefinably keen and wan about her anatomy, and she has a watchful way of looking out of the corners of her eyes without turning her head which could be pleasantly dispensed with, especially when she is in an ill humour and near knives.

Through all the good taste of her dress and little adornments, these objections so express themselves that she seems to go about like a very neat she-wolf imperfectly tamed.

There ARE at Chesney Wold this January week some ladies and gentlemen of the newest fashion, who have set up a dandyism—in religion, for instance.

Who would make the vulgar very picturesque and faithful by putting back the hands upon the clock of time and cancelling a few hundred years of history.

Who are to rejoice at nothing and be sorry for nothing. Who are not to be disturbed by ideas.

On whom even the fine arts, attending in powder and walking backward like the Lord Chamberlain, must array themselves in the milliners’ and tailors’ patterns of past generations and be particularly careful not to be in earnest or to receive any impress from the moving age.

Whether his whole soul is devoted to the great or whether he yields them nothing beyond the services he sells is his personal secret. He keeps it, as he keeps the secrets of his clients; he is his own client in that matter, and will never betray himself.

They appear to take as little note of one another as any two people enclosed within the same walls could. But whether each evermore watches and suspects the other, evermore mistrustful of some great reservation; whether each is evermore prepared at all points for the other, and never to be taken unawares; what each would give to know how much the other knows—all this is hidden, for the time, in their own hearts.

A People there are, no doubt—a certain large number of supernumeraries, who are to be occasionally addressed, and relied upon for shouts and choruses, as on the theatrical stage; but Boodle and Buffy, their followers and families, their heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, are the born first-actors, managers, and leaders, and no others can appear upon the scene for ever and ever.

Constancy in love is a good thing, but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort.

If you entertain the supposition that any real success, in great things or in small, ever was or could be, ever will or can be, wrested from Fortune by fits and starts, leave that wrong idea here or leave your cousin Ada here.

Trust in nothing but in Providence and your own efforts. Never separate the two,

I have said nothing to Ada, Esther. She has her friend and counsellor always near.

But we must take care, too, that our little woman’s life is not all consumed in care for others.

I am engaged to Mr. Turveydrop. There are two Mr. Turveydrops, father and son. My Mr. Turveydrop is the son, of course.

Young Mr. Turveydrop’s name is Prince; I wish it wasn’t, because it sounds like a dog, but of course he didn’t christen himself.

The burnt child, sir! What, you’re looking at my lodger’s birds, Mr. Jarndyce?

I don’t know what I may have lost by not being learned afore. I wouldn’t like to lose anything by being learned wrong now.

If he had had those bits of metal or thin paper to which mankind attached so much importance to put in the doctor’s hand, he would have put them in the doctor’s hand. Not having them, he substituted the will for the deed.

It seems so reasonable! My butcher says to me he wants that little bill. It’s a part of the pleasant unconscious poetry of the man’s nature that he always calls it a ‘little’ bill—to make the payment appear easy to both of us.

You couldn’t really mean the lamb without sending it in, whereas I can, and do, really mean the money without paying it!

If we make such men necessary by our faults and follies, or by our want of worldly knowledge, or by our misfortunes, we must not revenge ourselves upon them.

The three children close together, and two of them relying solely on the third, and the third so young and yet with an air of age and steadiness that sat so strangely on the childish figure.

It is only by resenting them, and by revenging them in my mind, and by angrily demanding the justice I never get, that I am able to keep my wits together.

I have been dragged for five and twenty years over burning iron, and I have lost the habit of treading upon velvet.

A person is never known till a person is proved.

The system! I am told on all hands, it’s the system. I mustn’t look to individuals. It’s the system. I mustn’t go into court and say, ‘My Lord, I beg to know this from you—is this right or wrong? Have you the face to tell me I have received justice and therefore am dismissed?’ My Lord knows nothing of it. He sits there to administer the system.

I would die there, saying, ‘You have brought me here and sent me from here many and many a time. Now send me out feet foremost!’

he could easily imagine that there Gridley was, years ago, wandering about in life for something to expend his superfluous combativeness upon—a sort of Young Love among the thorns—when the Court of Chancery came in his way and accommodated him with the exact thing he wanted.

Jo lives—that is to say, Jo has not yet died—in a ruinous place known to the like of him by the name of Tom-all-Alone’s. It is a black, dilapidated street, avoided by all decent people, where the crazy houses were seized upon, when their decay was far advanced, by some bold vagrants who after establishing their own possession took to letting them out in lodgings.

As on the ruined human wretch vermin parasites appear, so these ruined shelters have bred a crowd of foul existence that crawls in and out of gaps in walls and boards; and coils itself to sleep, in maggot numbers, where the rain drips in; and comes and goes, fetching and carrying fever and sowing more evil in its every footprint than Lord Coodle, and Sir Thomas Doodle, and the Duke of Foodle, and all the fine gentlemen in office, down to Zoodle, shall set right in five hundred years—though born expressly to do it.

This desirable property is in Chancery, of course. It would be an insult to the discernment of any man with half an eye to tell him so.

They were good qualities, without which no high place can be meritoriously won, but like fire and water, though excellent servants, they were very bad masters.

If they had been under Richard’s direction, they would have been his friends; but Richard being under their direction, they became his enemies.

it’ll do as well as anything else!

Young men like Mr. Allan Woodcourt who take it from a strong interest in all that it can do will find some reward in it through a great deal of work for a very little money and through years of considerable endurance and disappointment.

the professor replied that he knew of no building save the Temple of Science.

It is perhaps my duty to impart to you the little I know.

I think the worse of him? Not I, my loving cousin! And not you, I swear!

He has time before him, and the race to run.

I was thinking—that is, I have been thinking since I have been sitting here—that you ought to know of your own history all I know.

they were monotonous ideas, they had no variety of expression, they looked you out of countenance, and you looked them out of countenance.

I never know anything about money.

I have sworn never to set foot of mine, or horse’s foot of mine, pending the present relations between us, while I breathe the breath of life!

He carries himself like an eight-day clock at all times, like one of a race of eight-day clocks in gorgeous cases that never go and never went

I take it that everybody’s business in the social system is to be agreeable.

I don’t know what it is you call by that name, or where it is, or who possesses it.

I lie in a shady place like this and think of adventurous spirits going to the North Pole or penetrating to the heart of the Torrid Zone with admiration.

Take an extreme case. Take the case of the slaves on American plantations. I dare say they are worked hard, I dare say they don’t altogether like it. I dare say theirs is an unpleasant experience on the whole; but they people the landscape for me, they give it a poetry for me, and perhaps that is one of the pleasanter objects of their existence.

I suppose there is nothing pride can so little bear with as pride itself, and that she was punished for her imperious manner.

It is the long vacation in the regions of Chancery Lane. The good ships Law and Equity, those teak-built, copper-bottomed, iron-fastened, brazen-faced, and not by any means fast-sailing clippers are laid up in ordinary.

The bar of England is scattered over the face of the earth. How England can get on through four long summer months without its bar—which is its acknowledged refuge in adversity and its only legitimate triumph in prosperity—is beside the question; assuredly that shield and buckler of Britannia are not in present wear.

There is only one judge in town. Even he only comes twice a week to sit in chambers. If the country folks of those assize towns on his circuit could see him now! No full-bottomed wig, no red petticoats, no fur, no javelin-men, no white wands. Merely a close-shaved gentleman in white trousers and a white hat, with sea-bronze on the judicial countenance, and a strip of bark peeled by the solar rays from the judicial nose, who calls in at the shell-fish shop as he comes along and drinks iced ginger-beer!

My friends, why do I wish for peace? What is peace? Is it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely, and gentle, and beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? Oh, yes! Therefore, my friends, I wish for peace, upon you and upon yours.

It is Mr. Chadband’s habit—it is the head and front of his pretensions indeed—to keep this sort of debtor and creditor account in the smallest items and to post it publicly on the most trivial occasions.

Because you are in a state of darkness, because you are in a state of obscurity, because you are in a state of sinfulness, because you are in a state of bondage.

it is right that I should be humbled, it is right that I should be tried, it is right that I should be mortified, it is right that I should be corrected.

You are by no means to move off, Jo, for the great lights can’t at all agree about that. Move on!

The long vacation saunters on towards term-time like an idle river very leisurely strolling down a flat country to the sea.

He finds that nothing agrees with him so well as to make little gyrations on one leg of his stool, and stab his desk, and gape.

He is a town-made article, of small stature and weazen features, but may be perceived from a considerable distance by means of his very tall hat.

To become a Guppy is the object of his ambition. He dresses at that gentleman (by whom he is patronized), talks at him, walks at him, founds himself entirely on him.

there ARE chords in the human mind

Ill fo manger, you know

I trusted to things coming round

He has an old, old eye, has Smallweed; and he drinks and smokes in a monkeyish way

It’s the fashionable way; and fashion and whiskers have been my weaknesses

he is reported to be immensely rich; and whether he is a smuggler, or a receiver, or an unlicensed pawnbroker, or a money-lender—all of which I have thought likely at different times

he never gets beyond a certain point of either drunkenness or sobriety

Everything that Mr. Smallweed’s grandfather ever put away in his mind was a grub at first, and is a grub at last. In all his life he has never bred a single butterfly.

The name of this old pagan’s god was Compound Interest. He lived for it, married it, died of it.

the house of Smallweed, always early to go out and late to marry, has strengthened itself in its practical character, has discarded all amusements, discountenanced all story-books, fairy-tales, fictions, and fables, and banished all levities whatsoever.

He is a swarthy brown man of fifty, well made, and good looking, with crisp dark hair, bright eyes, and a broad chest. His sinewy and powerful hands, as sunburnt as his face, have evidently been used to a pretty rough life.

As he sits in the middle of the grim parlour, leaning a little forward, with his hands upon his thighs and his elbows squared, he looks as though, if he remained there long, he would absorb into himself the whole family and the whole four-roomed house, extra little back-kitchen and all.

It don’t pay. Stuff. Idleness. Folly.

The best kind of amends then for having gone away is to keep away, in my opinion.

It was a fancy to get it out of you. To have something in for my money.

I rose in life that way.

He wasn’t here.

That’s the Dead March in Saul. They bury soldiers to it, so it’s the natural end of the subject.

Quiet!

That’s what YOU are.

Much better to think of dead than alive, Jenny! Much better!

it’s what you DO. That’s what I estimate in a man in your way of business.

There an’t a doubt that it was the other one with this one’s dress on.

If you lived in an unfinished house, you couldn’t settle down in it; if you were condemned to leave everything you undertook unfinished, you would find it hard to apply yourself to anything

I was born into this unfinished contention with all its chances and changes, and it began to unsettle me before I quite knew the difference between a suit at law and a suit of clothes

It’s not as if I wanted a profession for life. These proceedings will come to a termination, and then I am provided for. No. I look upon it as a pursuit which is in its nature more or less unsettled, and therefore suited to my temporary condition

You must ever be the head and master here, father; and we feel how truly unnatural it would be in us if we failed to know it or if we failed to exert ourselves in every possible way to please you

points of deportment, which are born with a man, which may be improved by cultivation, but can never be originated

Your qualities are not shining, my dear child, but they are steady and useful.

Better to borrow, better to beg, better to die!

You were to confide freely in me, and I will confide freely in you. I ask you wholly to relinquish, for the present, any tie but your relationship.

Bygones shall be bygones, and a new page turned for you to write your lives in.

it is better for him that he should be free and that there should be no youthful engagement between you. Rick, it is better for her, much better; you owe it to her.

I am not at all changeable; but I am not unreasonable, and should never blame you.

You may trust in me, cousin Richard. I am not at all changeable; but I am not unreasonable, and should never blame you.

It was strange to me that Richard should not be able to forgive my guardian for entertaining the very same opinion of him which he himself had expressed of himself in much stronger terms to me.

He remembered her by fits and starts, even with bursts of tears, and at such times would confide to me the heaviest self-reproaches. But in a few minutes he would recklessly conjure up some undefinable means by which they were both to be made rich and happy for ever, and would become as gay as possible.

You may file a strong man’s heart away for a good many years, but it will tell all of a sudden at last.

the sickness of hope deferred was raging in so many hearts this polite show went calmly on from day to day, and year to year, in such good order and composure;

I don’t altogether like your being so bent upon it in your present state of mind; I’d rather you took to something else.

you’re a sensible man and a well-conducted man; that’s what YOU are, beyond a doubt. And mind you, I don’t talk to you as a common character, because you have served your country and you know that when duty calls we must obey.

There is a tie of many suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie I ever had on earth that Chancery has not broken.

I thought, boastfully, that they never could break my heart, Mr. Jarndyce. I was resolved that they should not.

You want excitement, you know, to keep YOU up; that’s what YOU want. You’re used to it, and you can’t do without it.

From suspicion to jealousy, Mrs. Snagsby finds the road as natural and short as from Cook’s Court to Chancery Lane.

Once there (and it was always lurking thereabout), it is very active and nimble in Mrs. Snagsby’s breast, prompting her to nocturnal examinations of Mr. Snagsby’s pockets; to secret perusals of Mr. Snagsby’s letters; to private researches in the day book and ledger, till, cash-box, and iron safe; to watchings at windows, listenings behind doors, and a general putting of this and that together by the wrong end.

If Mr. Snagsby could withstand his little woman’s look as it enters at his eyes, the windows of his soul, and searches the whole tenement, he were other than the man he is.

For howsoever bad the devil can be in fustian or smock-frock (and he can be very bad in both), he is a more designing, callous, and intolerable devil when he sticks a pin in his shirt-front, calls himself a gentleman, backs a card or colour, plays a game or so of billiards, and knows a little about bills and promissory notes, than in any other form he wears.

Governor and commander are interchangeable terms with Phil, expressive of the same respect and deference and applicable to nobody but Mr. George.

If a mark’s wanted, or if it will improve the business, let the customers take aim at me. They can’t spoil MY beauty. I’M all right. Come on! If they want a man to box at, let ’em box at me. Let ’em knock me well about the head. I don’t mind. If they want a light-weight to be throwed for practice, Cornwall, Devonshire, or Lancashire, let ’em throw me. They won’t hurt ME. I have been throwed, all sorts of styles, all my life!

I can carry my years; I am not a brimstone poll-parrot

he is good for his pay, and he is good for the selling price of his commission, and he is good for his chance in a lawsuit, and he is good for his chance in a wife

I have half a million of his signatures, I think!

I am not a man of business. Among civilians I am what they call in Scotland a ne’er-do-weel.

I feel as if I was being smothered

if you are afraid of doing any injury to Captain Hawdon, you may set your mind at rest about that.

I have him periodically in a vice. I’ll twist him, sir. I’ll screw him, sir

the only article of ornament of which she stands possessed appear’s to be her wedding-ring, around which her finger has grown to be so large since it was put on that it will never come off again until it shall mingle with Mrs. Bagnet’s dust.

It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.

very red blood of the superior quality, like inferior blood unlawfully shed, WILL cry aloud and WILL be heard.

The rich family sum has been divided by so many figures, and they are the something over that nobody knows what to do with.

Everybody on Sir Leicester Dedlock’s side of the question and of his way of thinking would appear to be his cousin more or less.

In this society, and where not, my Lady Dedlock reigns supreme.

She has an extensive acquaintance at Bath among appalling old gentlemen with thin legs and nankeen trousers, and is of high standing in that dreary city.

The cousins, even those older cousins who were paralysed when Sir Leicester married her, do her feudal homage;

it is a remarkable example of the confusion into which the present age has fallen; of the obliteration of landmarks, the opening of floodgates, and the uprooting of distinctions,

He is called, I believe—an—ironmaster.

In these busy times, when so many great undertakings are in progress, people like myself have so many workmen in so many places that we are always on the flight.

the sun-dial on the terrace has dumbly recorded for centuries that time which was as much the property of every Dedlock—while he lasted—as the house and lands.

I have found that to sever this strong bond would be to break her heart, I have long abandoned that idea.

our views of duty, and our views of station, and our views of education, and our views of—in short, ALL our views—are so diametrically opposed, that to prolong this discussion must be repellent to your feelings and repellent to my own.

In search of what? Of any hand that is no more, of any hand that never was, of any touch that might have magically changed her life?

Words, sobs, and cries are but air, and air is so shut in and shut out throughout the house in town that sounds need be uttered trumpet-tongued indeed by my Lady in her chamber to carry any faint vibration to Sir Leicester’s ears

Why was it so worrying to me to have her in our house, and confidential to me every night, when I yet felt that it was better and safer somehow that she should be there than anywhere else?

She has been told it often enough; and when she IS told it, she only gives me a placid look, as if I was I don’t know what—a steeple in the distance

Being what it is, she neither knows nor cares.

My heart aches for him; that it does!

Never have a mission, my dear child.

I hope he found some consolation in walls. I almost think he did.

Such a mean mission as the domestic mission was the very last thing to be endured among them

Mrs. Jellyby, all the while, sat smiling at the limited vision that could see anything but Borrioboola-Gha.

You will not fail in YOUR duty, my son and daughter, I believe?

I have no will at all—and no won’t—simply can’t.

He is no doubt born with an appetite—probably, when he is in a safer state of health, he has an excellent appetite.

Society, which has taken upon itself the general arrangement of the whole system of spoons and professes to have a spoon for our young friend, does NOT produce that spoon; and our young friend, therefore, says ‘You really must excuse me if I seize it.’

he had accepted himself with all his failings and had thought it sound philosophy to make the best of the bargain;

From the time when he was left in the loft-room, he vanished.

I silently prayed to our Father in heaven that I might not forget the lesson which this little sister taught me.

And Charley did not die. She flutteringly and slowly turned the dangerous point, after long lingering there, and then began to mend.

It is a close night, though the damp cold is searching too, and there is a laggard mist a little way up in the air.

I am in the downs. It’s this unbearably dull, suicidal room—and old Boguey downstairs, I suppose.

But there are bounds to these things when an unoffending party is in question, and I will acknowledge to you, Tony, that I don’t think your manner on the present occasion is hospitable or quite gentlemanly.

He never forgets anything. I saw him to-night, about eight—helped him to shut up his shop—and he had got the letters then in his hairy cap.

He has been as quiet since as an old rat asleep in his hole.

He can make all the letters separately, and he knows most of them separately when he sees them; he has got on that much, under me; but he can’t put them together.

It’s far from a pleasant thing to be plotting about a dead man in the room where he died, especially when you happen to live in it.

it’s not made out to me how it’s likely to be profitable, after all.

One disagreeable result of whispering is that it seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence, haunted by the ghosts of sound—strange cracks and tickings, the rustling of garments that have no substance in them, and the tread of dreadful feet that would leave no mark on the sea-sand or the winter snow.

inborn, inbred, engendered in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and that only—spontaneous combustion, and none other of all the deaths that can be died.

The house has not done so much in the stomachic article of cloves or in brandy-and-water warm since the inquest.

He has had something—he don’t know what—to do with so much in this connexion that is mysterious that it is possible he may even be implicated, without knowing it, in the present transaction.

I should then have related them to you, my love, over your French roll.

I am ready to go.

if you heard your friend out instead of flying at him, you wouldn’t fall into mistakes.

Possessing in yourself, Tony, all that is calculated to charm the eye—

I have never lived there and couldn’t get a lodging there now, whereas you have got one.

I have come to look after the property. Shake me up, and call in the police on duty at the next house to be explained to about the property.

The less the court understands of all this, the more the court likes it, and the greater enjoyment it has in the stock in trade of the Sol’s Arms.

Suspicion, eager and sharp, looks out. Another instant, close again.

I have nothing more to say to this young man!

he’s a leech in his dispositions, he’s a screw and a wice in his actions, a snake in his twistings, and a lobster in his claws.

You are always an honourable and straightforward fellow, as far as lays in your power, though a little flighty.

Discipline must be maintained.

the old girl’s metal is far more precious—than the preciousest metal. And she’s ALL metal!

I’ll have no more of your pipe-smokings and swaggerings. What? You’re an independent dragoon, too! Go to my lawyer (you remember where; you have been there before) and show your independence now, will you?

They do wait, however, with the perseverance of military tactics

You are not to pocket other people’s pounds, shillings, and pence and escape scot-free.

I have nothing to say to you. I don’t like your associates and don’t want you here.

Look at a millstone, Mr. George, for some change in its expression, and you will find it quite as soon as in the face of Mr. Tulkinghorn when he opens and reads the letter!

it is in the subtle poison of such abuses to breed such diseases. His blood is infected, and objects lose their natural aspects in his sight.

He looks to it, flushed and fitfully, to do something with his interests and bring them to some settlement. It procrastinates, disappoints, tries, tortures him; wears out his sanguine hopes and patience, thread by thread; but he still looks to it, and hankers after it, and finds his whole world treacherous and hollow.

I had always pitied her, never so much as now.

The old conspiracy to make me happy! Everybody seemed to be in it!

I felt it as he spoke to me. I could not tell him heartily enough how ready I was to receive her.

I had always been glad of my little power to soothe her under her calamity, but never, never, half so glad before.

I could not tell him heartily enough how ready I was to receive her.

I had always pitied her, never so much as now.

I had always been glad of my little power to soothe her under her calamity, but never, never, half so glad before.

I had always pitied her, never so much as now.

I had always been glad of my little power to soothe her under her calamity, but never, never, half so glad before.

I had always pitied her, never so much as now.

I had always been glad of my little power to soothe her under her calamity, but never, never, half so glad before.

I was very much in earnest.

Why, what had I to fear, I thought, when there was this nobility in the soul of a labouring man’s daughter!

I felt, through all my tumult of emotion, a burst of gratitude to the providence of God that I was so changed as that I never could disgrace her by any trace of likeness, as that nobody could ever now look at me and look at her and remotely think of any near tie between us.

I must keep this secret, if by any means it can be kept, not wholly for myself. I have a husband, wretched and dishonouring creature that I am!

He is Sir Leicester Dedlock’s lawyer, mechanically faithful without attachment, and very jealous of the profit, privilege, and reputation of being master of the mysteries of great houses.

I have but one; I can have but one.

If you hear of Lady Dedlock, brilliant, prosperous, and flattered, think of your wretched mother, conscience-stricken, underneath that mask! Think that the reality is in her suffering, in her useless remorse, in her murdering within her breast the only love and truth of which it is capable!

I hope it may not appear very unnatural or bad in me that I then became heavily sorrowful to think I had ever been reared.

Your mother, Esther, was your disgrace, and you are hers. The time will come—and soon enough—when you will understand this better, and will feel it too, as no one save a woman can.

I saw very well that I could not have been intended to die, or I should never have lived; not to say should never have been reserved for such a happy life.

I knew I was as innocent of my birth as a queen of hers and that before my Heavenly Father I should not be punished for birth nor a queen rewarded for it.

If you were living in an unfinished house, liable to have the roof put on or taken off—to be from top to bottom pulled down or built up—to-morrow, next day, next week, next month, next year—you would find it hard to rest or settle.

There’s no now for us suitors.

I had need to get some scrap of comfort out of all this business, for it’s a bad one at the best, as I have no occasion to tell you.

it taints everybody.

I have no art, no disguise. If he takes me by the hand and leads me through Westminster Hall in an airy procession after fortune, I must go.

I have NO common sense.

my desire is so to discharge the duties of life as to leave them a good name.

I wish to leave the poor girls some little independence, as well as a good name.

true and good above the dead sea of the Chancery suit and all the ashy fruit it cast ashore

if Mrs. Jellyby had discharged her own natural duties and obligations before she swept the horizon with a telescope in search of others

where there’s a will there’s a way, you know, Esther, the world over

I have it in my power to assure you that you never can advance my welfare by such means

I’ll take my oath to it if it will be any satisfaction to you

The one great principle of the English law is to make business for itself.

the question is never one of a change from wrong to right (which is quite an extraneous consideration), but is always one of injury or advantage to that eminently respectable legion, Vholes.

In a word, Mr. Vholes, with his three daughters and his father in the Vale of Taunton, is continually doing duty, like a piece of timber, to shore up some decayed foundation that has become a pitfall and a nuisance.

I never give hopes.

This desk is your rock, sir!

injustice breeds injustice; the fighting with shadows and being defeated by them necessitates the setting up of substances to combat;

it has become a gloomy relief to turn to the palpable figure of the friend who would have saved him from this ruin and make HIM his enemy.

My duty prosperously ended, all between us is ended.

the idol is down. I have no purpose to serve now but burial in oblivion.

It is due alike to the oath I have taken, alike to the shattered idol, and alike to circumstances over which I have no control, that the whole should be buried in oblivion.

But Coodle knew the danger, and Doodle knew the danger, and all their followers and hangers-on had the clearest possible perception of the danger.

Britannia being much occupied in pocketing Doodle in the form of sovereigns, and swallowing Doodle in the form of beer, and in swearing herself black in the face that she does neither—plainly to the advancement of her glory and morality—the London season comes to a sudden end,

so did they see this gallery hushed and quiet, as I see it now; so think, as I think, of the gap that they would make in this domain when they were gone; so find it, as I find it, difficult to believe that it could be without them; so pass from my world, as I pass from theirs, now closing the reverberating door; so leave no blank to miss them, and so die.

Now the moon is high; and the great house, needing habitation more than ever, is like a body without life.

At this hour and by this light it changes into threatening hands raised up and menacing the handsome face with every breath that stirs.

This distracted country has lost its senses in many respects, I grieve to say, but—

It is a part of Mr. Tulkinghorn’s policy and mastery to have no political opinions; indeed, NO opinions.

The same formal politeness, the same composed deference that might as well be defiance; the whole man the same dark, cold object, at the same distance, which nothing has ever diminished.

The power and force of this woman are astonishing!

I neither wish to spare myself nor to be spared.

He has conquered her. She falters, trembles, and puts her hand confusedly to her head.

The sole consideration in this unhappy case is Sir Leicester.

My experience teaches me, Lady Dedlock, that most of the people I know would do far better to leave marriage alone. It is at the bottom of three fourths of their troubles.

I am to drag my present life on, holding its pains at your pleasure, day by day?

I am to remain on this gaudy platform on which my miserable deception has been so long acted, and it is to fall beneath me when you give the signal?

I am very rich in hate. I hate my Lady, of all my heart.

I will help you well, and with a good will. It is what YOU do.

You appear to know a good deal,

In this city there are houses of correction (where the treadmills are, for women), the gates of which are very strong and heavy, and no doubt the keys too. I am afraid a lady of your spirit and activity would find it an inconvenience to have one of those keys turned upon her for any length of time.

For what I say, I mean; and what I threaten, I will do, mistress.

It matters little now how much I thought of my living mother who had told me evermore to consider her dead.

If he were wrong, he would make amends when the Chancery suit was over. If he were groping in the dark, he could not do better than do his utmost to clear away those clouds in which so much was confused and obscured.

Such an unworldly, uncalculating, gossamer creature is a relief to him and an amusement. But as to advising or encouraging or occupying a serious station towards anybody or anything, it is simply not to be thought of in such a child as Skimpole.

He has no idea of the value of money. He introduces Rick, and then he is good friends with Mr. Vholes and borrows five pounds of him. He means nothing by it and thinks nothing of it.

we DON’T get on in life. We don’t pretend to do it.

It is he who encourages me. He emerges from great feats of business, presents the brightest prospects before me as their result, and calls upon me to admire them. I do admire them—as bright prospects.

We are capable of looking on and of being interested, and we DO look on, and we ARE interested. What more can we do?

She brought her young husband home one day, and they and their young fledglings have their nest upstairs. I dare say at some time or other Sentiment and Comedy will bring THEIR husbands home and have THEIR nests upstairs too.

she wrote him that from the date of that letter she died to him—as in literal truth she did—and that the resolution was exacted from her by her knowledge of his proud temper and his strained sense of honour, which were both her nature too.

You have wrought changes in me, little woman, since the winter day in the stage-coach. First and last you have done me a world of good since that time.

It told me that I would gain nothing by such a marriage and lose nothing by rejecting it, for no new relation could enhance the tenderness in which he held me, and whatever my decision was, he was certain it would be right.

He had often thought of our future, and foreseeing that the time must come, and fearing that it might come soon, when Ada (now very nearly of age) would leave us, and when our present mode of life must be broken up, had become accustomed to reflect on this proposal.

I am afraid the face in the glass was going to cry again at this reproach, but I held up my finger at it, and it stopped.

When you are mistress of Bleak House, you are to be as cheerful as a bird. In fact, you are always to be cheerful; so let us begin for once and for all.

This was a good time, to be sure, to sit down morbidly and cry! As to its seeming at all strange to me at first (if that were any excuse for crying, which it was not) that I was one day to be the mistress of Bleak House, why should it seem strange?

The dried remains of the flowers. It would be better not to keep them now. They had only been preserved in memory of something wholly past and gone, but it would be better not to keep them now.

I thought it not unlikely that he might speak to me about the letter, but he did not say a word.

I tried over and over again in my own room at night, but I could not write an answer that at all began like a good answer, so I thought each night I would wait one more day. And I waited seven more days, and he never said a word.

I had made up my mind to speak to him now. In short, I had come down on purpose.

I put my two arms round his neck and kissed him, and he said was this the mistress of Bleak House, and I said yes; and it made no difference presently, and we all went out together, and I said nothing to my precious pet about it.

I found them looking at one another across a table, the one so open and the other so close, the one so broad and upright and the other so narrow and stooping, the one giving out what he had to say in such a rich ringing voice and the other keeping it in in such a cold-blooded, gasping, fish-like manner that I thought I never had seen two people so unmatched.

I merely come down here under the seal of confidence and mention it in order that everything may be openly carried on and that it may not be said afterwards that everything was not openly carried on. My wish is that everything should be openly carried on.

We whose ambition it is to be looked upon in the light of respectable practitioners, sir, can but put our shoulders to the wheel. We do it, sir. At least, I do it myself; and I wish to think well of my professional brethren, one and all.

Like you, Esther, but useless, and so NOT like you!

It is a pity I ever was prevailed upon to turn out of my road for any other. It would be wisdom to abandon it now, after all the time, anxiety, and pains I have bestowed upon it! Oh, yes, true wisdom. It would be very agreeable, too, to some people; but I never will.

I am sure it is. I—I wish I was dead!

And the dear girl makes me this generous offer from under the same John Jarndyce’s roof, and with the same John Jarndyce’s gracious consent and connivance, I dare say, as a new means of buying me off.

It only came from my heart.

it was even more mischievous to use persuasion with him than to leave him as he was.

What you were last month, you are to-day; you are no worse, you are no better.

I felt for my old self as the dead may feel if they ever revisit these scenes.

Tom only may and can, or shall and will, be reclaimed according to somebody’s theory but nobody’s practice.

There is not a drop of Tom’s corrupted blood but propagates infection and contagion somewhere.

He was so very sorry for me that he could scarcely speak.

I will accept him as a trust, and it shall be a sacred one!

I have scarcely a friend there now but you.

He got into trouble last night, sir; but he’ll look for me at the lodging-house.

He did nothing but what was kind-hearted by me, and that’s the wonder of it.

do you know that this is all along of you and of her goodness to you?

He is a slow-torturing kind of man. He is no more like flesh and blood than a rusty old carbine is.

He keeps me on a constant see-saw. He won’t hold off, and he won’t come on.

He chafes and goads me till—Bah! Nonsense! I am forgetting myself.

he is the ordinary home-made article. Dirty, ugly, disagreeable to all the senses, in body a common creature of the common streets, only in soul a heathen.

Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, right reverends and wrong reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.

I have said, my child, that what I do, I do for your sake, not my own. It is done. What I am towards you, Rosa, is what I am now—not what I shall be a little while hence.

The fashionable world—tremendous orb, nearly five miles round—is in full swing, and the solar system works respectfully at its appointed distances.

Even so does he darken her life.

It is a street of such dismal grandeur, so determined not to condescend to liveliness, that the doors and windows hold a gloomy state of their own in black paint and dust,

The power of this woman is astonishing. She has been acting a part the whole time.

It is no longer your secret. Excuse me. That is just the mistake. It is my secret, in trust for Sir Leicester and the family.

you are not to be trusted. You have put the case in a perfectly plain way, and according to the literal fact; and that being the case, you are not to be trusted.

the Roman pointed at the murderous hand uplifted against his life, and pointed helplessly at him, from night to morning, lying face downward on the floor, shot through the heart.

Some men rarely revert to their father, but seem, in the bank-books of their remembrance, to have transferred all the stock of filial affection into their mother’s name.

It is well for the old girl that she has but one birthday in a year, for two such indulgences in poultry might be injurious.

Worldly goods are divided unequally, and man must not repine.

No, it must be sought within the confines of domestic bliss.

He keeps very close to him. Whatever the subject of the conversation, he keeps a tender eye upon him.

Every man must live, and ought to it.

Constant dropping will wear away a stone, and constant coaching will wear out a Dame Durden.

duty is duty, and friendship is friendship. I never want the two to clash if I can help it.

I was only too happy to be in such request.

It is difficult to offer aid to an independent man with that just kind of pride which he possesses.

I really was so, and I had nothing to do but to be myself.

How much less amiable I must have been than they thought me, how much less amiable than I thought myself, to be so preoccupied with my own cheerfulness and contentment as to think that it only rested with me to put my dear girl right and set her mind at peace!

Either the suit must be ended, Esther, or the suitor. But it shall be the suit, my dear girl, the suit, my dear girl!

if ever in my life I saw a love that nothing but death could change, I saw it then before me.

Three or four hours were not a long time after years.

I felt as if it were my duty and obligation to go with them.

If they can’t make me innocent out of the whole truth, they are not likely to do it out of anything less, or anything else.

You could as soon take up and shoulder an eight and forty pounder by your own strength as turn that man when he has got a thing into his head and fixed it there.

I have never done well in life beyond my duty as a soldier, and if the worst comes after all, I shall reap pretty much as I have sown.

Time and place cannot bind Mr. Bucket. Like man in the abstract, he is here to-day and gone to-morrow—but, very unlike man indeed, he is here again the next day.

Between the immeasurable track of space beyond the little wound that has thrown the one into the fixed sleep which jolts so heavily over the stones of the streets, and the narrow track of blood which keeps the other in the watchful state expressed in every hair of his head!

Very strange things comes to our knowledge in families, miss; bless your heart, what you would think to be phenomenons, quite.

I wish my people to be impressed with the enormity of the crime, the determination to punish it, and the hopelessness of escape.

A gentleman can bear a shock when it must come, boldly and steadily.

A gentleman can make up his mind to stand up against almost any blow.

I know so much about so many characters, high and low, that a piece of information more or less don’t signify a straw.

don’t you go and let yourself be put out of the way because of my knowing anything of your family affairs.

The chance to hush it is to let in these people now in a wrangle with your footmen.

The cat’s away, and the mice they play; the frost breaks up, and the water runs.

So it is, and such is life.

the less you PARLAY, the better, you know.

I worked it out in my mind while I was talking to her at supper.

She shall do nothing without my knowledge, she shall be my prisoner without suspecting it, she shall no more escape from me than from death, and her life shall be my life, and her soul my soul, till I have got her, if she did this murder?

I’m surprised at the indiscreetness you commit. You’ll say something that’ll be used against you, you know. You’re sure to come to it.

the necessity of patience in our business, and never doing a thing in a hurry

I should have lost the weapon

Your sex have such a surprising animosity against one another when you do differ

You cannot do these things? Then you can do as you please with me. It is but the death, it is all the same

Heaven knows what he sees

he has been for years a main fibre of the root of his dignity and pride

It won’t do to have truth and justice on his side; he must have law and lawyers

You would have sought me out; you would have purchased my discharge; you would have taken me down to Chesney Wold

You have made your bed. Now, lie upon it

I can’t bear it; I can’t make up my mind to it

I have no longer a will of my own in this case, and whatever is said or done, I give my promise not to have any.

so long accustomed to suppress emotion and keep down reality, so long schooled for her own purposes in that destructive school which shuts up the natural feelings of the heart like flies in amber and spreads one uniform and dreary gloss over the good and bad, the feeling and the unfeeling, the sensible and the senseless

Thus, a terrible impression steals upon and overshadows her that from this pursuer, living or dead—obdurate and imperturbable before her in his well-remembered shape, or not more obdurate and imperturbable in his coffin-bed—there is no escape but in death.

Hunted, she flies. The complication of her shame, her dread, remorse, and misery, overwhelms her at its height; and even her strength of self-reliance is overturned and whirled away like a leaf before a mighty wind.

He fell down, this morning, a handsome stately gentleman, somewhat infirm, but of a fine presence, and with a well-filled face. He lies upon his bed, an aged man with sunken cheeks, the decrepit shadow of himself.

Of all men upon earth, Sir Leicester seems fallen from his high estate to place his sole trust and reliance upon this man.

Time flies; it’s getting on for one o’clock. When one strikes, there’s another hour gone, and it’s worth a thousand pound now instead of a hundred.

You keep yourself cool and equal for anything that may happen, and it’ll be the better for you, the better for me, the better for Lady Dedlock, and the better for Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet.

I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you before. Inspector Bucket. Look at that handkerchief, sir, Miss Esther Summerson’s. Found it myself put away in a drawer of Lady Dedlock’s, quarter of an hour ago. Not a moment to lose. Matter of life or death.

He was really very kind and gentle, and as he stood before the fire warming his boots and rubbing his face with his forefinger, I felt a confidence in his sagacity which reassured me.

You see, whatever you do, don’t you go and fret yourself. You keep yourself cool and equal for anything that may happen, and it’ll be the better for you, the better for me, the better for Lady Dedlock, and the better for Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet.

Whenever a person says to you that they are as innocent as can be in all concerning money, look well after your own money, for they are dead certain to collar it if they can.

Whenever you find a young man behind the kitchen-door, you give that young man in charge on suspicion of being secreted in a dwelling-house with an unlawful purpose.

Fast and loose in one thing, fast and loose in everything. I never knew it fail.

The naturalest way is the best way, and the naturalest way is your own way.

There’s something kept back.

I’m a practical one, and that’s my experience. So’s this rule.

You know me. I’m Inspector Bucket, and you can trust me.

As all partings foreshadow the great final one, so, empty rooms, bereft of a familiar presence, mournfully whisper what your room and what mine must one day be.

Nothing but the strength of his purpose enables him to make it.

In such a light both aspire alike, both rise alike, both children of the dust shine equally.

Rumour, busy overmuch, however, will not go down into Lincolnshire.

It is given out that my Lady has gone down into Lincolnshire, but is expected to return presently.

The church-clocks will strike the hours just the same, Sir Leicester, and the night will pass away just the same. My Lady will come back, just the same.

If any distant sound be audible in this case, it departs through the gloom like a feeble light in that, and all is heavier than before.

Poor pretence as it is, these allusions to her being expected keep up hope within him.

She knows that this is not a period for bringing the rough light upon him; she thinks his tears too sacred to be seen, even by her.

I quite understand. Trust me, I will remain near you only so long as I can fully respect it.

Because you’ll come to that if you don’t look out.

And yet a married woman, possessing your attractions, shuts her eyes (and sparklers too), and goes and runs her delicate-formed head against a wall.

I have wandered a long distance, and for many hours, and I know that I must soon die. These streets! I have no purpose but to die.

I have done all I could do to be lost. I shall be soon forgotten so, and shall disgrace him least.

Unreason and injustice at the top, unreason and injustice at the heart and at the bottom, unreason and injustice from beginning to end—if it ever has an end—how should poor Rick, always hovering near it, pluck reason out of it?

the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road, instead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is of the kind I care for.

You must not suppose it to be a fine endowment. It is a very, very commonplace affair, my dear, an appointment to a great amount of work and a small amount of pay; but better things will gather about it, it may be fairly hoped.

She shone in the miserable corner like a beautiful star. She adorned and graced it so that it became another place.

There is a ruin of youth which is not like age, and into such a ruin Richard’s youth and youthful beauty had all fallen away.

I want him, when he comes home, to find no trouble in my face. I want him, when he looks at me, to see what he loved in me.

I look forward a little while, and I don’t know what great aid may come to me. When Richard turns his eyes upon me then, there may be something lying on my breast more eloquent than I have been, with greater power than mine to show him his true course and win him back.

I look forward a long while, through years and years, and think that then, when I am growing old, or when I am dead perhaps, a beautiful woman, his daughter, happily married, may be proud of him and a blessing to him.

Pain comes to ME when it wants me. Now, I have had very little pleasure at our dear Richard’s lately, and your practical sagacity demonstrates why.

Our young friends, losing the youthful poetry which was once so captivating in them, begin to think, ‘This is a man who wants pounds.’

Responsibility is a thing that has always been above me—or below me

I don’t attach any value to money. I don’t care about it, I don’t know about it, I don’t want it, I don’t keep it—it goes away from me directly.

I am above the rest of mankind in such a case as that. I can act with philosophy in such a case as that. I am not warped by prejudices, as an Italian baby is by bandages. I am as free as the air. I feel myself as far above suspicion as Caesar’s wife.

Skimpole protests to Bucket, ‘What’s this for? I don’t understand it, it is of no use to me, take it away.’ Bucket still entreats Skimpole to accept it. Are there reasons why Skimpole, not being warped by prejudices, should accept it? Yes.

I have no doubt that his desire to retrieve what he had lost was rendered the more intense by his grief for his young wife, and became like the madness of a gamester.

It was not too late to hear them, for it was not too late to be animated by them to be good, true, grateful, and contented.

I have had nothing else, poor Rick excepted—it’s a large exception—in my mind.

it is NOT cancelled. Here it is, a perfect instrument!

Do you believe there is a consideration in the world that would induce her to take such a step against her favourite son?

I have not sneaked home to rob your children, if not yourself, brother, of your rights. I, who forfeited mine long ago!

You must make up your mind to remain UNscratched, I think.

Being bent upon it, you can dispose by will of anything you have the misfortune to inherit in any way you like, you know.

I am a kind of a weed, and it’s too late to plant me in a regular garden.

Everything about you is in perfect order and discipline; everything about me requires to be kept so.

I would not have my Esther’s bright example lost; I would not have a jot of my dear girl’s virtues unobserved and unhonoured;

I have no more to say. My dearest, Allan Woodcourt stood beside your father when he lay dead—stood beside your mother.

I shall be found about here somewhere. It’s a west wind, little woman, due west! Let no one thank me any more, for I am going to revert to my bachelor habits, and if anybody disregards this warning, I’ll run away and never come back!

I have learned a lesson now, sir. It was a hard one, but you shall be assured, indeed, that I have learned it.

I will not begin it in the old way now,

I have done you many wrongs, my own. I have fallen like a poor stray shadow on your way, I have married you to poverty and trouble, I have scattered your means to the winds.

You will forgive me all this, my Ada, before I begin the world?

The world that sets this right.

It is known for certain that the handsome Lady Dedlock lies in the mausoleum in the park, where the trees arch darkly overhead, and the owl is heard at night making the woods ring; but whence she was brought home to be laid among the echoes of that solitary place, or how she died, is all mystery.

But it is whispered that when he is most ferocious towards his old foe, he is really most considerate, and that Sir Leicester, in the dignity of being implacable, little supposes how much he is humoured.

The sorrow that has been in her face—for it is not there now—seems to have purified even its innocent expression and to have given it a diviner quality.

I have never known the wind to be in the east for a single moment since the day when he took me to the porch to read the name.

I never lie down at night but I know that in the course of that day he has alleviated pain and soothed some fellow-creature in the time of need.

I owe it all to him, my love, my pride! They like me for his sake, as I do everything I do in life for his sake.

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