“If these innocent creatures cannot move you for themselves, how can I…” — Charles Dickens | V2Melody

“If these innocent creatures cannot move you for themselves, how can I possibly hope to move you in their name?”

Appealing directly to compassion for vulnerable children · Speech, Hospital for Sick Children, London, 9 February 1858

Charles Dickens

About Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

7 February 1812–9 June 1870

Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in a modest terraced house at 1 Mile End Terrace in Landport, Portsmouth, Hampshire, England. The second of eight children born to John and Elizabeth Dickens, his arrival came during a time of naval activity and modest aspirations in a bustling port town. His…

More by Charles Dickens

Poems by Charles Dickens

The Hymn of the Wiltshire Laborers Listen

More remarks by Charles Dickens

“I shall never recall you as a mere public audience, but rather as a host of personal friends, and ever with the greatest gratitude, tenderness, and consideration.”

Transforming the relationship between performer and audience into remembered friendship · Speech, New York, 20 April 1868

“In the closes and wynds of that picturesque place—I am sorry to remind you what fast friends picturesqueness and typhus often are—we saw more poverty and sickness in an hour than many people would believe in a life.”

Piercing romantic views of poverty with the reality of disease and suffering · Speech, Hospital for Sick Children, London, 9 February 1858

“What you have already wanted until now has been a set, steady, constant purpose.”

Identifying constancy of purpose as essential to maturity · Letter to Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, 1868

Hope
Truth