Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature.
I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul.
Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart.
‎And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire.
And a beautiful world we live in, when it is possible, and when many other such things are possible, and not only possible, but done-- done, see you!-- under that sky there, every day.
I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.
Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their daily pilgrimage through the world.
What greater gift than the love of a cat.
Be natural my children. For the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of art." (Last words, according to Dickens's obituary in The Times.)