Quotations by the character Stephen Blackpool from Hard Times.

Quotations related to the character of Stephen Blackpool in the Charles Dickens novel Hard Times. Stephen Blackpool is a downtrodden mill worker in the polluted industrial town of Coketown. Despite being aged just forty he is referred to as Old Stephen.

Stephen Blackpool

You didn’t take your wife for fast and for loose; but for better for worse.

Thou changest me from bad to good.

A creature so foul to look at, in her tatters, stains and splashes, but so much fouler than that in her moral infamy, that it was a shameful thing even to see her.

It is said that every life has its roses and thorns; there seemed, however, to have been a misadventure or mistake in Stephen’s case, whereby somebody else had become possessed of his roses, and he had become possessed of the same somebody else’s thorns in addition to his own.

The innermost fortifications of that ugly citadel, where Nature was as strongly bricked out as killing airs and gases were bricked in.

He had never known before the strength of the want in his heart for the frequent recognition of a nod, a look, a word; or the immense amount of relief that had been poured into it by drops through such small means.

He had been for many years, a quiet silent man, associating but little with other men, and used to companionship with his own thoughts.