Bleak House Quotes

• The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.

  Charles Dickens

  Law, Principles, Consistently

  Bleak House ch. 39 (1853)

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• But injustice breeds injustice; the fighting with shadows and being defeated by them necessitates the setting up of substances to combat.

  Charles Dickens

  Fighting, Words Of Wisdom, Shadow

  Charles Dickens (1853). “Bleak House”, p.391

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• I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.

  Charles Dickens

  Freedom, Butterfly, Liberty

  Bleak House ch. 6 (1853)

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• And I am bored to death with it. Bored to death with this place, bored to death with my life, bored to death with myself.

  Charles Dickens

  Bored, Bored To Death

  "Fictional character: Lady Dedlock". "Bleak House" Episode #1.1, www.imdb.com. 2005.

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• Why, Mrs. Piper has a good deal to say, chiefly in parentheses and without punctuation, but not much to tell.

  Charles Dickens

  Punctuation, Pipers, Deals

  Charles Dickens (2016). “Bleak House (Diversion Classics)”, p.185, Diversion Books

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• I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies.

  Charles Dickens

  Freedom, Butterfly, Deny

  Bleak House ch. 6 (1853)

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• It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.

  Charles Dickens

  Truth, Greatness, Men

  Bleak House ch. 28 (1853)

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• Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort.

  Charles Dickens

  Mean, Love Is, Effort

  Charles Dickens (2010). “Bleak House”, p.207, Broadview Press

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• The plain rule is to do nothing in the dark, to be a party to nothing underhanded or mysterious, and never to put his foot where he cannot see the ground.

  Charles Dickens

  Party, Dark, Feet

  Charles Dickens (1867). “Bleak House”, p.220

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• The universe, he observed, makes rather an indifferent parent, I am afraid.

  Charles Dickens

  Parent, Words Of Wisdom, Religion

  Charles Dickens (1852). “Bleak House”, p.101

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• Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.

  Charles Dickens

  Heart, Men, Compassion

  'Bleak House' (1853) ch. 47 (on the death of Jo)

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• The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings.

  Charles Dickens

  Law, Principles, Consistently

  1852-3 Bleak House, ch.39.

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• Every story has already been told. Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever had.

  Anna Quindlen

  Inspirational Life, Writing, Wrinkles

  Anna Quindlen (2009). “Being Perfect”, p.36, Random House

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• I was shocked by the reaction I got for Bleak House. It was very intensive but one of the best jobs of my life. It was a chance to play a character that grows and develops and I was very enmeshed in it. But I didn't realise how stylish it was and how much people would love it.

  Anna Maxwell Martin

  Jobs, Character, Play

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• Born Losers is a beautiful piece of writing. Scott Sandage is history's Dickens; his bleak house, the late nineteenth century world of almost anonymous American men who failed. With wit and sympathy, Sandage illuminates the grey world of credit evaluation, a little studied smothering arm of capitalism. This is history as it should be, a work of art exploring the social cost of our past.

  William S. McFeely

  Beautiful, Art, Writing

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• So many things were testing his faith. There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it then seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall? Had Almighty God, in all His infinite wisdom, really been afraid that men six thousand years ago would succeed in building a tower to heaven?

  Joseph Heller

  Book, Men, Islands

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• Having seen Justin's work on Bleak House, I knew that he'd be incredibly well prepared and interesting stylistically for this and that was definitely the case. It's very liberating for actors - and I can only speak for myself here - but he creates a very loose environment and he's a great collaborator.

  Eric Bana

  Interesting, House, Actors

  "The Other Boleyn Girl - Eric Bana interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• Bleak House by Charles Dickens is my favourite book.

  Trevor Phillips

  Book, House, Favourite

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• No-one is going to sit down and read Bleak House to the family any more, but they can all huddle up happily in front of Charles Bronson.

  Martin Amis

  House, Down And, Bleak

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