“Being practical people, we never allow anybody to scare the birds; and the birds, being practical people too, come about us in myriads.” ~ Little Dorrit
Little Dorrit Quotes
The Marshalsea debtors’ prison plays a large part in Little Dorrit. Few people knew that Dickens’s father had been sent to Marshalsea for three months. We hope you enjoy this collection of 51 quotes from Little Dorrit.
“I know nothing of philosophical
“I know nothing of philosophical philanthropy. But I know what I have seen, and what I have looked in the face in this world here, where I find myself. And I tell you this, my friend, that there are people (men and women both, unfortunately) who have no good in them–none. That there are people whom it is necessary to detest without compromise. That there are people who must be dealt with as enemies of the human race. That there are people who have no human heart, and who must be crushed like savage beasts and cleared out of the way.” ~ Little Dorrit
“I am the only child
“I am the only child of parents who weighed, measured, and priced everything; for whom what could not be weighed, measured, and priced, had no existence. Strict people as the phrase is, professors of a stern religion, their very religion was a gloomy sacrifice of tastes and sympathies that were never their own, offered up as a part of a bargain for the security of their possessions. Austere faces, inexorable discipline, penance in this world and terror in the next–nothing graceful or gentle anywhere, and the void in my cowed heart everywhere–this was my childhood.” ~ Little Dorrit
The worst class of sum
The worst class of sum worked in the every-day world is cyphered by the diseased arithmeticians who are always in the rule of Subtraction as to the merits and successes of others, and never in Addition as to their own. ~ Little Dorrit
The changes of a fevered
The changes of a fevered room are slow and fluctuating; but the changes of the fevered world are rapid and irrevocable. ~ Little Dorrit
When I have heard him
When I have heard him talking to Papa during the sittings for the picture, I have sat wondering whether it could be that he has no belief in anybody else, because he has no belief in himself. ~ Little Dorrit
From these cities they would
From these cities they would go on again, by the roads of vines and olives, through squalid villages, where there was not a hovel without a gap in its filthy walls, not a window with a whole inch of glass or paper; where there seemed to be nothing to support life, nothing to eat, nothing to make, nothing to grow, nothing to hope, nothing to do but die. ~ Little Dorrit
To bring deserving things down
To bring deserving things down by setting undeserving things up is one of its perverted delights; and there is no playing fast and loose with the truth, in any game, without growing the worse for it. ~ Little Dorrit
Her look at her father,
Her look at her father, half admiring him and proud of him, half ashamed for him, all devoted and loving, went to his inmost heart. ~ Little Dorrit
The Barnacles were a very
The Barnacles were a very high family, and a very large family. They were dispersed all over the public offices, and held all sorts of public places. Either the nation was under a load of obligation to the Barnacles, or the Barnacles were under a load of obligation to the nation. It was not quite unanimously settled which; the Barnacles having their opinion, the nation theirs. ~ Little Dorrit
