Hard Times Quotes
"Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life."
"In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!"
"It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic."
"Girl number twenty unable to define a horse! Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals!"
"You are to be in all things regulated and governed by fact."
"We hope to have, before long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact."
"You must discard the word Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it."
"You don’t walk upon flowers in fact; you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets."
"This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste."
"I was tired, Father. I have been tired a long time."
"I don't know of what—of everything, I think."
"A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man."
"I hadn’t a shoe to my foot. As to a stocking, I didn’t know such a thing by name. I passed the day in a ditch, and the night in a pigsty."
"Cold? I was born with inflammation of the lungs, and of everything else, I believe, that was capable of inflammation."
"How I fought through it, I don’t know. I was determined, I suppose."
"It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it."
"Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the material aspect of the town; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the immaterial."
"I confess, however, that the misgiving has crossed me on my way home."
"You may be quite at ease, Jupe, on that score. In such a case, your father, I apprehend, must find out Mr. Sleary."
"Oh, give me my clothes, give me my clothes, and let me go away before I break my heart!"
"People must be amused, Thquire, somehow; they can't be always a-working, nor yet they can't be always a-learning."
"You are more useful to my mother, and more pleasant with her than I can ever be."
"I have such unmanageable thoughts," returned his sister, "that they will wonder."
"Father says she was quite a scholar. She died when I was born. She was—a dancer."
"Did your father love her?" Louisa asked these questions with a strong, wild, wandering interest peculiar to her; an interest gone astray like a banished creature and hiding in solitary places.
"All through school hours I make mistakes. Mr. and Mrs. McChoakumchild call me up, over and over again, regularly to make mistakes. I can't help them. They seem to come natural to me."
"I wish I could collect all the Facts we hear so much about," said Tom, spitefully setting his teeth, "and all the Figures, and all the people who found them out—and I wish I could put a thousand barrels of gunpowder under them and blow them all up together!"
"Always a muddle?" said Rachael, with another gentle touch upon his arm, as if to recall him out of the thoughtfulness.
"Not a tone of her voice but had its echo in his innermost heart."
"The man seemed to have brightened with the night as he went on."
"Never fear, good people of an anxious turn of mind, that Art will consign Nature to oblivion."
"There is an unfathomable mystery in the meanest of them, forever."
"Supposing we were to reverse our arithmetic for material objects, and to govern these awful unknown quantities by other means!"
"Thou art an Angel; it may be thou hast saved my soul alive!"
"I am, as I have told thee, Stephen, thy poor friend. Angels are not like me."
"I coom home desp’rate. I coom home wi’out a hope, and mad wi’ thinking that when I said a word o’ complaint I was reckoned a onreasonable Hand."
"Thou changest me from bad to good. Thou mak’st me humbly wisfo’ to be more like thee."
"In some stages of his manufacture of the human fabric, the processes of Time are very rapid."
"Time hustled him into a little noisy and rather dirty machinery, in a by-corner, and made him Member of Parliament for Coketown."
"Else wherefore live we in a Christian land, eighteen hundred and odd years after our Master?"
"You only knew the town was there, because you knew there could have been no such sulky blotch upon the prospect without a town."
"Surely there never was such fragile china-ware as that of which the millers of Coketown were made."
"They were ruined when they were required to send labouring children to school; they were ruined when inspectors were appointed to look into their works."
"I do not pretend to understand these things, my lot having been signally cast in a widely different sphere."
"Gold and silver coin, precious paper, secrets that if divulged would bring vague destruction upon vague persons."
"It must be admitted that he allowed her half a pound of tea a year, which was weak in him."
"All his proceedings were the result of the nicest and coldest calculation."
"He had grown into an extremely clear-headed, cautious, prudent young man, who was safe to rise in the world."
"It was generally considered, indeed, that she had been due some time, and ought to have fallen long ago."
"Mr. Sparsit, as a Powler, being also quite out of the place of any such dissensions."
"I hold a trust here, Bitzer, under Mr. Bounderby."
"As to their wanting recreations, ma'am, it's stuff and nonsense."
"I don’t want a wife and family. Why should they?"
"‘While my hat covers my family,’ or ‘While my bonnet covers my family’—as the case might be, ma’am—‘I have only one to feed, and that’s the person I most like to feed.’"
"I shouldn’t wish to disturb you at your meals, ma’am, particularly tea, knowing your partiality for it."
"I am the servant of circumstances, sir," said Mrs. Sparsit, "and I have long adapted myself to the governing power of my life."
"In general much blacker," returned Mrs. Sparsit in her uncompromising way.
"It was once my good or ill fortune, as it may be—before I became a widow—to move in a very different sphere. My husband was a Powler."
"I am the bearer of a letter of introduction to Mr. Bounderby the Banker."
"I assure you I attach not the least importance to any opinions."
"I ha' but a word to sen, and I could sen nommore if I was to speak till strike o’ day."
"I know weel that yo aw resolve to ha' nommore ado wi' a man who is not wi' yo in this matther."
"I simply canna coom in. I mun go th’ way as lays afore me. I mun tak’ my leave o’ aw heer."
"If there is any right for me at aw, my friends, I think ’tis that."
"He had never known before the strength of the want in his heart for the frequent recognition of a nod, a look, a word; or the immense amount of relief that had been poured into it by drops through such small means."
"It was even harder than he could have believed possible to separate in his own conscience his abandonment by all his fellows from a baseless sense of shame and disgrace."
"I’m as sooary as yo, sir, when the people’s leaders is bad," said Stephen, shaking his head. "They taks such as offers. Haply ’tis na’ the sma’est o’ their misfortuns when they can get no better."
"No, ma’am, no. They’re true to one another, faithfo’ to one another, ’fectionate to one another, e’en to death."
"Be poor amoong ’em, be sick amoong ’em, grieve amoong ’em for onny o’ th’ monny causes that carries grief to the poor man’s door, an’ they’ll be tender wi’ yo, gentle wi’ yo, comfortable wi’ yo, Chrisen wi’ yo."
"The strong hand will never do ’t. Vict’ry and triumph will never do ’t. Agreeing fur to mak’ one side, unnat’rally awlus and forever right, and toother side unnat’rally awlus and forever wrong will never, never do ’t."
"Nor yet lettin’ alone will never do ’t. Let thousands upon thousands alone, aw leading the like lives and aw faw’en into the like muddle, and they will be as one, and yo will be as anoother, wi’ a black unpassable world betwixt yo, just as long or short a time as sitch-like misery can last."
"Not drawin’ nigh to fo’k, wi’ kindness and patience an’ cheery ways, that so draws nigh to one another in their monny troubles, and so cherishes one another in their distresses wi’ what they need themseln—like, I humbly believe, as no people the genelman ha’ seen in aw his travels can beat—will never do ’t till th’ sun turns t’ ice."
"I towd thee, my dear," said Stephen Blackpool—"that night—that I would never see or think o’ onnything that angered me, but thou, so much better than me, should’st be beside it. Thou’rt beside it now. Thou mak’st me see it wi’ a better eye. Bless thee. Good night. Good-bye!"
"You have done so much for him, you are so fond of him, your whole life, Mrs. Bounderby, expresses such charming self-forgetfulness on his account."
"I would never complain of anything, and what I have done I do not in the least regret."
"It is the drifting icebergs, setting with any current anywhere, that wreck the ships."
"I cannot bear to see you so, sir. Try a hand at backgammon, sir, as you used to do when I had the honour of living under your roof."
"You may be certain that I will not reproach you. You may be certain that I will be compassionate and true to you. You may be certain that I will save you at whatever cost."
"In the name of that time, Tom, tell me the truth now!"
"I am so tired that I am sure I wonder I don’t say anything to get to sleep."
"The ground on which I stand has ceased to be solid under my feet."
"I know I have been your favourite child. I know you have intended to make me happy. I have never blamed you, and I never shall."
"When I consider your character; when I consider that what has been known to me for hours has been concealed by you for years; when I consider under what immediate pressure it has been forced from you at last; I come to the conclusion that I cannot but mistrust myself."
"Such little actions, slight in another man, were very noticeable in him, and his daughter received them as if they had been words of contrition."
"If I see reason to mistrust myself for the past, Louisa, I should also mistrust myself for the present and the future."
"Some persons hold that there is a wisdom of the Head, and that there is a wisdom of the Heart."
"All her wildness and passion had subsided; but, though softened, she was not in tears."
"The air that would be healthful to the earth, the water that would enrich it, the heat that would ripen it, tear it when caged up."
"I am so proud and so hardened, so confused and troubled, so resentful and unjust to everyone and to myself, that everything is stormy, dark, and wicked to me."
"In the innocence of her brave affection, and the brimming up of her old devoted spirit, the once deserted girl shone like a beautiful light upon the darkness of the other."
"Forgive me, pity me, help me! Have compassion on my great need, and let me lay this head of mine upon a loving heart!"
"The strongest qualities she possessed, long turned upon themselves, became a heap of obduracy that rose against a friend."
"I ha’ been—dreadful, and dree, and long, my dear—but ’tis ower now."
"I ha’ fell into th’ pit, my dear, as have cost, wi’in the knowledge o’ old fo’k now livin’, hundreds and hundreds o’ men’s lives—fathers, sons, brothers, dear to thousands an’ thousands, and keeping ’em fro’ want and hunger."
"See how we die an’ no need, one way an’ another—in a muddle—every day!"
"But in our judgments, like as in our doin’s, we mun bear and forbear."
"I ha’ seen an’ spok’n wi’ yor son, one night. I ask no more o’ yo than that yo clear me—an’ I trust to yo to do ’t."
"Often as I coom to myseln, and found it shinin’ on me down there in my trouble, I thowt it were the star as guided to Our Saviour’s home. I awmust think it be the very star!"
"Bless thee! Will soombody be pleased to coover my face!"
"The star had shown him where to find the God of the poor; and through humility, and sorrow, and forgiveness, he had gone to his Redeemer’s rest."