Great Expectations Important Quotes

I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born, in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dissuadinig arguments of my best friends.

Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.

It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter.

Now, I return to this young fellow. And the communication I have got to make is, that he has great expectations.

All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself.

. . . in seclusion, she had secluded herself from a thousand natural and healing influences; that, her mind, brooding solitary, had grown diseased, as all minds do and must and will that reverse the appointed order of their Maker . . .

I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than gout, rum, and purser’s stores.

We need never be ashamed of our tears.

So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.

Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.

… Take another glass of wine, and excuse my mentioning that society as a body does not expect one to be so strictly conscientious in emptying one’s glass, as to turn it bottom upwards with the rim on one’s nose.

No varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.

I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.

All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else’s manufacture, is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make, as good money!

We were equals afterwards, as we had been before; but, afterwards at quiet times when I sat looking at Joe and thinking about him, I had a new sensation of feeling conscious that I was looking up to Joe in my heart.