“We are all of us in the habit of saying in our every-day life, that “We…” — Charles Dickens | V2Melody

“We are all of us in the habit of saying in our every-day life, that “We never know the value of anything until we lose it.” Let us try the newsvendors by the test.”

Applying a familiar truth about loss to overlooked everyday services · Speech, London, 9 May 1865

Memory
Time

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

“My faith in the people governing is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in the People governed is, on the whole, illimitable.”

Contrasting distrust of rulers with confidence in ordinary people · Speech, Birmingham and Midland Institute, 27 September 1869

Hope
Truth

“It strikes me when I hear these things as if these great men looked upon the arts as a sort of dancing dogs, or Punch’s show, to be turned to for amusement when one has nothing else to do.”

Mocking the tendency to treat art as trivial entertainment · Speech, London, 8 May 1858

Art
Truth

“But let a good book in these “bad” times be made accessible, even upon an abstruse and difficult subject, and my life on it, it shall be extensively bought, read, and well considered.”

Expressing confidence in the public appetite for serious books when they are accessible · Speech, Birmingham, 6 January 1853

Art
Hope