Quotations on the theme of Poverty by Charles Dickens.

Charles Dickens quotations on the theme of Poverty.

Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870) was one of the foremost writers from the Victorian era and remains a popular widely-read author today. During his lifetime he produced 15 novels, five novellas, and a large number of shorter stories and essays. He wrote from personal experiences and concerned himself with a number of contemporary social issues whilst supporting numerous charitable causes, giving assistance in time, money or personal effort. Our archive of over 600 Charles Dickens quotations are organised by both source material, i.e. the work or speech in which it originally appeared, and also grouped thematically. In this archive, we have collected quotations from Charles Dickens works on the theme of Poverty.

Click on a quotation for more information, including links to original source, the context in which it appeared, related material and the ability to give each quotation a rating and help us compile the very best Charles Dickens quotations.

Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds.

The Circumlocution Office2022-10-07T14:33:49+01:00Categories: A Christmas Carol|Tags: Appearance (Person), Poverty|

Barely past her childhood, it required but a glance to discover that she was one of those children, born and bred in neglect and vice, who have never known what childhood is: who have never been taught to love and court a parent’s smile, or to dread a parent’s frown.

The Circumlocution Office2020-01-02T11:48:07+00:00Categories: A Visit to Newgate, Sketches by Boz|Tags: Childhood, Newgate, Poverty|

Gin-drinking is a great vice in England, but wretchedness and dirt are a greater; and until you improve the homes of the poor, or persuade a half-famished wretch not to seek relief in the temporary oblivion of his own misery, with the pittance which, divided among his family, would furnish a morsel of bread for each, gin-shops will increase in number and splendour.

The Circumlocution Office2023-07-28T22:25:43+01:00Categories: Gin Shops, Sketches by Boz|Tags: Dirt, Gin Palaces, Poverty, Sanitation|

I lived rough, that you should live smooth.

The Circumlocution Office2022-10-06T17:08:07+01:00Categories: Great Expectations|Tags: Generosity, Poverty, Sacrifice|

A girl, whose miserable and emaciated appearance was only to be equalled by that of the candle which she shaded with her hand.

The Circumlocution Office2021-02-25T19:03:18+00:00Categories: Sketches by Boz, The Drunkard’s Death|Tags: Appearance (Person), Neglect, Poverty, Starvation|

They are invariably numerous and splendid in precise proportion to the dirt and poverty of the surrounding neighbourhood.

The Circumlocution Office2023-07-28T22:18:43+01:00Categories: Gin Shops, Sketches by Boz|Tags: Alcohol, Gin Palaces, Poverty|

Every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage; all these ornament the banks of Folly Ditch.

The Circumlocution Office2023-04-23T23:01:54+01:00Categories: Oliver Twist|Tags: London, Poverty|

Here were poor streets where faded gentility essayed with scanty space and shipwrecked means to make its last feeble stand, but tax-gatherer and creditor came there as elsewhere, and the poverty that yet faintly struggled was hardly less squalid and manifest than that which had long ago submitted and given up the game.

The Circumlocution Office2019-05-31T15:47:21+01:00Categories: The Old Curiosity Shop|Tags: Appearance (Places), Poverty, Slums|

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.

The Circumlocution Office2022-02-21T10:06:32+00:00Categories: The Pickwick Papers|Tags: Debt, Law, Money, Poverty|

That wretched woman with the infant in her arms, round whose meagre form the remnant of her own scanty shawl is carefully wrapped, has been attempting to sing some popular ballad, in the hope of wringing a few pence from the compassionate passer-by.

The Circumlocution Office2019-04-16T22:05:26+01:00Categories: Sketches by Boz, The Streets - Night|Tags: Poverty, Singing|

The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.

The Circumlocution Office2019-04-16T22:22:17+01:00Categories: Sketches by Boz|Tags: Money, Poverty|

The tears fall thick and fast down her own pale face; the child is cold and hungry, and its low half-stifled wailing adds to the misery of its wretched mother, as she moans aloud, and sinks despairingly down, on a cold damp door-step.

The Circumlocution Office2019-04-16T22:23:41+01:00Categories: Sketches by Boz, The Streets - Night|Tags: Poverty, Tears|

12 3 Next