The Pickwick Papers

Wotever is, is right, as the young nobleman sveetly remarked wen they put him down in the pension list 'cos his mother's uncle's vife's grandfather vunce lit the king's pipe vith a portable tinder-box.

Anythin' for a quiet life, as the man said wen he took the sitivation at the lighthouse.

WE know, Mr. Weller—we, who are men of the world—that a good uniform must work its way with the women, sooner or later.

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

Ven you’re a married man, Samivel, you’ll understand a good many things as you don’t understand now; but vether it’s worth goin’ through so much, to learn so little, as the charity-boy said ven he got to the end of the alphabet, is a matter o' taste.

Poetry's unnat'ral; no man ever talked poetry 'cept a beadle on Boxin'-Day, or Warren's blackin', or Rowland's oil, or some of them low fellows; never you let yourself down to talk poetry, my boy.

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fireside and his quiet home!

We still leave unblotted in the leaves of our statute book, for the reverence and admiration of successive ages, the just and wholesome law which declares that the sturdy felon shall be fed and clothed, and that the penniless debtor shall be left to die of starvation and nakedness. This is no fiction.

By the bye, who ever knew a man who never read or wrote either, who hadn't got some small back parlour which he WOULD call a study!

"Eccentricities of genius, Sam," said Mr. Pickwick. "You may retire."

Tongue —, well that's a wery good thing when it ain't a woman's.

"Think, Sir!" replied Mr. Weller; "why, I think he's the wictim o' connubiality, as Blue Beard's domestic chaplain said, vith a tear of pity, ven he buried him."

There are very few moments in a man's existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat.

I took a good deal o’ pains with his eddication, sir; let him run in the streets when he was wery young, and shift for his-self. It’s the only way to make a boy sharp, sir.

"It’s a wery remarkable circumstance, Sir", said Sam, "that poverty and oysters seems to go together."

"I am ruminating," said Mr. Pickwick, "on the strange mutability of human affairs." "Ah! I see — in at the palace door one day, out at the window the next. Philosopher, Sir?" "An observer of human nature, Sir," said Mr. Pickwick. "Ah, so am I. Most people are when they've little to do and less to get."

Whenever the Buffs and Blues met together at public meeting ... disputes and high words arose between them... Everything in Eatanswill was made a party question. If the Buffs proposed to new skylight the market-place, the Blues got up public meetings, and denounced the proceeding; if the Blues proposed the erection of an additional pump in the High Street, the Buffs rose as one man and stood aghast at the enormity.

Take example by your father, my boy, and be very careful o’ widders all your life, specially if they’ve kept a public house, Sammy.

Oh, my young friend, who else could have resisted the pleading of sixteen of our fairest sisters, and withstood their exhortations to subscribe to our noble society for providing the infant negroes in the West Indies with flannel waistcoats and moral pocket-handkerchiefs?

Battledore and shuttlecock's a wery good game, vhen you ain't the shuttlecock and two lawyers the battledores, in which case it gets too excitin' to be pleasant.

"It's always best on these occasions to do what the mob do." "But suppose there are two mobs?" suggested Mr. Snodgrass. "Shout with the largest," replied Mr. Pickwick.

It's over, and can't be helped, and that's one consolation, as they always says in Turkey, ven they cuts the wrong man's head off.

Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.