Charles Dickens Quotes

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

The greatest conflicts are not between two people but between one person and himself.

... when one's outward lot is perfect, the sense of inward imperfection is the more pressing.

Concealed sorrow bursts the heart, and rages within us as an internal fire.

Everyone doubts themselves. It's just a matter of admitting it or not.

Many of our most serious conflicts are conflicts within ourselves. Those who suppose their judgements are always consistent are unreflective or dogmatic.

You never know what's right, what you feel inside versus what is portrayed.

She nourishes the poison in her veins and is consumed by a secret fire.

We often mistake the original part of ourselves for a weakness.

Whoever aims publicly at great things and at length perceives secretly that he is too weak to achieve them, has usually also insufficient strength to renounce his aims publicly, and then inevitably becomes a hypocrite.

I didn't tell him that what I was most scared of, most haunted by, was something I didn't understand and could never run away from. It was myself.

Why am I always at war with myself? Why have I told, as if upon compulsion, what I knew all along I ought to have withheld? Why am I making a friend of this woman beside me, in spite of the whispers against her that I hear in my heart?

The crisis is not out there in the world, it is within our own consciousness.

You got a death wish, Truant?' Which was the thing that scared me. 'Cause maybe I did.

I don't know if I had success or not. But I am afraid of myself. Why am I afraid of myself? I always feel - I don't know - weak in the sense of not having power and also power is a fleeting thing, here today, gone tomorrow.

Sometimes what we want isn't what's best for us - Della

Our thoughts are often worse than we are.

The world's most sensible person and the biggest idiot both stay within us. The worst part is, you can't even tell who is who.

My toughest enemy is in the mirror - would you look at that.

The most phlegmatic dispositions often contain the most inflammable spirits, as fire is struck from the hardest flints.

I just wish that God or my parents or Sam or my sister or someone would just tell me what's wrong with me. Just tell me how to be different in a way that makes sense. To make this all go away.

Sometimes you can get so far in yourself that you don't know who you are.

God defend me from myself.

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn the literature of the whole world - all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls.

I wish I knew where I was going. Doomed to be carried of the spirit into the wilderness, I suppose. I wish I could be more moderate in my desires, but I cannot, and so there is no rest.