Quotes of the Week 18 (Celebrating Charles Dickens)

To celebrate Charles Dickens' 200th birthday, Quote of the Week this week is comprised of ten of my favorite Dickens quotes.  There are so many more that I would have loved to include, but I wanted this post to actually be readable, so I restrained myself to ten.  (Naturally, I saved the best one for the last.)

"Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts."
-Great Expectations

"I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for."
-A Christmas Carol

"I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it."
-Sydney Carton, A Tale of Two Cities

"The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists."
-Charles Dickens

"Be guided only by the Healer of the sick, the Raiser of the dead, the Friend of all who were afflicted and forlorn, the patient Master who shed tears of compassion for our infirmities. We cannot but be right if we put all the rest away, and do everything in remembrance of Him. There is no vengeance and no infliction of suffering in His life, I am sure. There can be no confusion in following Him, and seeking for no other footsteps, I am certain!"
-Amy Dorrit, Little Dorrit

"Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away."
–A Tale of Two Cities (talking about Sydney Carton, but it could be referring to Steerforth!)

"Give me a moment, because I like to cry for joy. It's so delicious, John dear, to cry for joy."
-Bella Wilfer, Our Mutual Friend

"The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again."
-Nicholas Nickleby

"No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot."
-Our Mutual Friend

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."
-Sydney Carton, A Tale of Two Cities