Charles Dickens

“A loving heart is the truest wisdom.”

“Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.”

“There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth”

“I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.”

“There were times when he could not read the face he had studied so long, and when this lonely girl was a greater mystery to him than any women of the world...”

“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.”

“Her heart--is given him, with all its love and truth. She would joyfully die with him, or, better than that, die for him. She knows he has failings, but she thinks they have grown up through his being like one cast away, for the want of something to trust in, and care for, and think well of. . . .”

“To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.”

“There is a wisdom of the head, and... a wisdom of the heart.”

“It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away.”

“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.”

“There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.”

“The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.”

“Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest.”