“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

“What the working people have found me towards them in my books, I am throughout my life.”

Affirming that his sympathy for working people was personal as well as literary · Speech, Birmingham, 6 January 1853

• Art
• Truth

“This watch, with which you have presented me, shall be my companion in my hours of sedentary working at home, and in my wanderings abroad.”

Linking a gift with future work, travel and remembrance · Speech, Coventry, 4 December 1858

• Memory
• Time