Charles Dickens

“La difficulté d'écrire l'anglais m'est extrêmement ennuyeuse. Ah, mon Dieu! si l'on pouvait toujours écrire cette belle langue de France! The difficulty of writing English is most tiresome to me. My God! If only we could write this beautiful language of France at all times!”

“On the public execution on 6 July 1840 of the valet François Benjamin Courvoisier , who had murdered his employer Lord William Russell .”

“I was present, myself, at the execution of Courvoisier . I was, purposely, on the spot, from midnight of the night before; and was a near witness of the whole process of the building of the scaffold, the gathering of the crowd, the gradual swelling of the concourse with the coming”

“O let us love our occupations, Bless the squire and his relations, Live upon our daily rations, And always know our proper stations. The Chimes , Second Quarter”

“I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here. Comment while on an American tour (March 1842), as quoted in Dickens (1949) by Hesketh Pearson, Ch. 8”

“The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the land, In England there shall be dear bread”

“To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart. Master Humphrey's Clock , (1840) Vol. 1”

“Love is not a feeling to pass away, Like the balmy breath of a summer day; It is not”

“If any one were to ask me what in my opinion was the dullest and most stupid spot on the face of the Earth, I should decidedly say Chelmsford . Letter to Thomas Beard (11 January 1835), in Madeline House, et al ., The Letters of Charles Dickens (1965), p. 53”

“A Dinner at Poplar Walk”