“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

“Their lives are lives of care and privation, and hard struggles with very stern realities.”

Emphasising the material hardship hidden behind artistic careers · Speech, London, 6 April 1846

• Art
• Mortality

“Education for the business of life, and for the due cultivation of domestic virtues, is at least as important from day to day to the grown person as to the child.”

Arguing that education remains essential throughout adult life · Speech, Glasgow Athenæum, 28 December 1847

• Childhood
• Truth