Friendless I can never be, for all mankind are my kindred, and I am on ill terms with no one member of my great family.
~
Master Humphrey's Clock by Charles Dickens
For who can wonder that man should feel a vague belief in tales of disembodied spirits wandering through those places which they once dearly affected, when he himself, scarcely less separated from his old world than they, is for ever lingering upon past emotions and bygone times, and hovering, the ghost of his former self, about the places and people that warmed his heart of old?
~
Master Humphrey's Clock by Charles Dickens
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 by Charles Dickens
Recollections of the past and visions of the present come to bear me company; the meanest man to whom I have ever given alms appears, to add his mite of peace and comfort to my stock; and whenever the fire within me shall grow cold, to light my path upon this earth no more, I pray that it may be at such an hour as this, and when I love the world as well as I do now.
~
Master Humphrey's Clock by Charles Dickens
It is a silent, shady place, with a paved courtyard so full of echoes, that sometimes I am tempted to believe that faint responses to the noises of old times linger there yet, and that these ghosts of sound haunt my footsteps as I pace it up and down.
~
Master Humphrey's Clock by Charles Dickens
"Your voice and music are the same to me."
~
The Haunted Man by Charles Dickens
Surely there had been no figure leaning on the back of his chair; no face looking over it. It is certain that no gliding footstep touched the floor, as he lifted up his head, with a start, and spoke. And yet there was no mirror in the room on whose surface his own form could have cast its shadow for a moment; and, Something had passed darkly and gone!
~
The Haunted Man by Charles Dickens
Looking up, she showed him quite a young face, but one whose bloom and promise were all swept away, as if the haggard winter should unnaturally kill the spring.
~
The Haunted Man by Charles Dickens
"I have read in your face, as plain as if it was a book, that but for some trouble and sorrow we should never know half the good there is about us."
~
The Haunted Man by Charles Dickens
When these shadows brought into the minds of older people, other thoughts, and showed them different images. When they stole from their retreats, in the likenesses of forms and faces from the past, from the grave, from the deep, deep gulf, where the things that might have been, and never were, are always wandering.
~
The Haunted Man by Charles Dickens
. . .
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