Date: 1854

"There was an air of jaded sullenness in them both, and particularly in the girl: yet, struggling through the dissatisfaction of her face, there was a light with nothing to rest upon, a fire with nothing to burn, a starved imagination keeping life in itself somehow, which brightened its expression."

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"Thomas Gradgrind took no heed of these trivialities of course, but passed on as a practical man ought to pass on, either brushing the noisy insects from his thoughts, or consigning them to the House of Correction."

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"By nonsense he meant fancy; and truly it is probable she was as free from any alloy of that nature, as any human being not arrived at the perfection of an absolute idiot, ever was."

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"It was not the touch he needed most at such a moment--the touch that could calm the wild waters of his soul, as the uplifted hand of the sublimest love and patience could abate the raging of the sea--yet it was a woman's hand too."

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"She turned her head, and the light of her face shone in upon the midnight of his mind."

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"t was altogether unaccountable that a young gentleman whose imagination had been strangled in his cradle, should be still inconvenienced by its ghost in the form of grovelling sensualities; but such a monster, beyond all doubt, was Tom."

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"'My dear Bounderby,' said James, dismounting, and giving his bridle to his servant, 'I do see it; and am as overcome as you can possibly desire me to be, by the spectacle afforded to my mental view.'"

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"Remembrances of how she had journeyed to the little that she knew, by the enchanted roads of what she and millions of innocent creatures had hoped and imagined; of how, first coming upon Reason through the tender light of Fancy, she had seen it a beneficent god, deferring to gods as great as its...

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"Her remembrances of home and childhood, were remembrances of the drying up of every spring and fountain in her young heart as it gushed out."

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"She erected in her mind a mighty Staircase, with a dark pit of shame and ruin at the bottom; and down those stairs, from day to day and hour to hour, she saw Louisa coming."

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)