“Like certain plants which the poorest peasant may grow in the poorest soil, it can be cultivated by any one, and it is certain in its own good season to bring forth flowers and fruit.”

Describing attention as a faculty available to anyone willing to cultivate it · Speech, Birmingham and Midland Institute, 27 September 1869

• Hope
• Nature

“Surely, then, the gardener who produces shapes and objects so lovely and so comforting, should have some hold upon the world’s remembrance when he himself becomes in need of comfort.”

Arguing that those who create beauty deserve care in their own need · Speech, London, 14 June 1852

• Beauty
• Memory
• Nature

“I feel as if I stood amongst old friends, whom I had intimately known and highly valued.”

Expressing the intimacy Dickens felt with readers who had shared his imagined world · Speech, Edinburgh, 25 June 1841

• Art
• Friendship