Great Expectations Quotes
"Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape."
"In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong."
"You have been in every line I have ever read."
"I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be."
"The broken heart. You think you will die, but you keep living, day after day after terrible day."
"I clutched the leg of the table again immediately, and pressed it to my bosom as if it had been the companion of my youth and friend of my soul."
"I felt that I could bear no more, and that I must run away."
"Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white."
"But prominent in it was a draped table with a gilded looking-glass, and that I made out at first sight to be a fine lady's dressing-table."
"I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes."
"You are not afraid of a woman who has never seen the sun since you were born?"
"I am tired. I want diversion, and I have done with men and women. Play."
"So new to him, so old to me; so strange to him, so familiar to me; so melancholy to both of us!"
"Your own, one day, my dear, and you will use it well."
"She says many hard things of you, but you say nothing of her. What do you think of her?"
"Behave yourself. I have a pretty large experience of boys, and you're a bad set of fellows."
"You little coarse monster, what do you think of me now?"
"I don't wish to make a display of my feelings, but I have habitually thought of you more in the night than I am quite equal to."
"I have taken to the sofa with my staylace cut, and have lain there hours insensible."
"Without expecting any thanks, or anything of the sort, I have remained in that state, hours and hours."
"Matthew will come and see me at last when I am laid on that table."
"I suppose there's nothing to be done but comply and depart."
"The mice have gnawed at it, and sharper teeth than teeth of mice have gnawed at me."
"When the ruin is complete, and when they lay me dead, in my bride's dress on the bride's table, that will be the finished curse upon him."
"Come and fight," said the pale young gentleman.
"What could I possibly do then, but say I was enjoying myself, when I wasn't!"
"On the Rampage, Pip, and off the Rampage, Pip:-such is Life!"
"I felt more than ever dissatisfied with my home and with my trade and with everything."
"As the nights were dark and the way was dreary, almost any companionship on the road was better than none."
"I was made to murder my uncle with no extenuating circumstances whatever."
"I am disgusted with my calling and with my life."
"I never shall or can be comfortable—or anything but miserable—unless I can lead a very different sort of life from the life I lead now."
"Biddy was never insulting, or capricious, or Biddy to-day and somebody else to-morrow."
"Pip is that hearty welcome to go free with his services to honor and fortune, as no words can tell him."
"Lord forbidding is pious, but not to the purpose."
"Bear in mind then, that Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better."
"I shall bring my clothes here in a bundle one evening, most likely on the evening before I go away."
"You may get cheated, robbed, and murdered in London."
"I was to go to 'Barnard's Inn,' to young Mr. Pocket's rooms, where a bed had been sent in for my accommodation."
"As to our table, you won't find that bad, I hope, for it will be supplied from our coffee-house here."
"The idea of its being you!" said I. And then we contemplated one another afresh, and laughed again.
"It's all over now, I hope, and it will be magnanimous in you if you'll forgive me for having knocked you about so."
"I was rather on the lookout for good fortune then."
"But she couldn't - at all events, she didn't."
"That girl's hard and haughty and capricious to the last degree, and has been brought up by Miss Havisham to wreak revenge on all the male sex."
"I hadn't come into your good fortune at that time."
"I tell you what I should like. We are so harmonious, and you have been a blacksmith - would you mind it?"
"You get at your mouth better (which after all is the object), and you save a good deal of the attitude of opening oysters, on the part of the right elbow."
"Dear me! It's quite a story, and shall be saved till dinner-time."
"He practiced on her affection in that systematic way, that he got great sums of money from her."
"Babies are to be nut-crackered dead, for people's poor grandpapa's positions!"
"I soon contracted expensive habits, and began to spend an amount of money that within a few short months I should have thought almost fabulous; but through good and evil I stuck to my books."
"There was no other merit in this, than my having sense enough to feel my deficiencies."
"I am my own engineer, and my own carpenter, and my own plumber, and my own gardener, and my own Jack of all Trades."
"As to his shirt-collar, and his coat-collar, they were perplexing to reflect upon - insoluble mysteries both."
"I am to come to London the day after tomorrow by the midday coach. I believe it was settled you should meet me?"
"I hope, Mr. Pip, you will excuse my sending round."
"If she favors you, love her. If she wounds you, love her."
"I adopted her, to be loved. I bred her and educated her, to be loved."
"You know what I mean. I have no softness there, no—sympathy—sentiment—nonsense."
"It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world."
"I am glad to have your approbation, gentlemen."
"I'm only a subordinate. I can't take it. Don't go on in that way with a subordinate."
"Don't try on useless measures. Why should you?"
"Everything was done that could be done, but the evidence was too strong for us."
"I think I shall be out of this on Monday, sir."
"I am glad to have the chance of bidding you good by, Mr. Wemmick."
"I'll accept the will for the deed," said Wemmick.
"You don't mind what they ask of me, the subordinate; but you'll never catch 'em asking any questions of my principal."
"He's always so high. His constant height is of a piece with his immense abilities."
"I should have been happier and better if I had never seen Miss Havisham's face."
"There was no fire like the forge fire and the kitchen fire at home."
"You consider it, undoubtedly, a handsome sum of money."
"I must request to know what you mean by this?"
"Let only me be hurt, if I have been ungenerous."
"I had taken care to have it well understood in Little Britain when my birthday was."
"You know I would not deceive you; he was not there a minute, and he is gone."
"This friend is trying to get on in commercial life, but has no money, and finds it difficult and disheartening to make a beginning."
"Choose your bridge, Mr. Pip, and take a walk upon your bridge, and pitch your money into the Thames over the centre arch of your bridge, and you know the end of it."
"Serve a friend with it, and you may know the end of it too,-but it's a less pleasant and profitable end."
"Invest portable property in a friend? Certainly, he should not. Unless he wants to get rid of the friend."
"Walworth is one place, and this office is another. Much as the Aged is one person, and Mr. Jaggers is another. They must not be confounded together."
"You acted noble, my boy. Noble, Pip! And I have never forgot it!"
"I've been a sheep-farmer, stock-breeder, other trades besides, away in the new world."
"I've done wonderfully well. There's others went out alonger me as has done well too, but no man has done nigh as well as me. I'm famous for it."
"I lived rough, that you should live smooth; I worked hard, that you should be above work."
"What odds, dear boy? Do I tell it, fur you to feel a obligation? Not a bit. I tell it, fur you to know..."
"Lord strike me dead! I says each time, -and I goes out in the air to say it under the open heavens, -'but wot, if I gets liberty and money, I'll make that boy a gentleman!'"
"I must have my smoke. When I was first hired out as shepherd t'other side the world, it's my belief I should ha' turned into a molloncolly-mad sheep myself, if I hadn't a had my smoke."
"I was took up, took up, took up, to that extent that I reg'larly grow'd up took up."
"In jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail."
"I know'd my name to be Magwitch, chrisen'd Abel. How did I know it? Much as I know'd the birds' names in the hedges to be chaffinch, sparrer, thrush."
"He was younger than me, but he'd got craft, and he'd got learning, and he overmatched me five hundred times told and no mercy."
"I ain't took so many year to make a gentleman, not without knowing what's due to him."
"He looked about him in a confused way, as if he had lost his place in the book of his remembrance."
"The time wi' Compeyson was a'most as hard a time as ever I had; that said, all's said."
"Why should I pause to ask how much of my shrinking from Provis might be traced to Estella?"
"It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round."
"I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably expressed the fact in my countenance."
"As I saw that he was restrained by fealty to Little Britain from saying as much as he could, I could not press him."