Publisher's Synopsis
From the Introduction.
At the New York Press Dinner to Charles Dickens, the late Hon. Henry J. Raymond, expressed himself as follows:
"All that he has written-I say it without the exception of a single word that has proceeded from his pen-has been calculated to infuse into every human heart the feeling that every man was his brother, and that the highest duty he could do V the world, and the highest pleasure he could confer upon himself, and the greatest service he could render to humanity, was to bring that other heart, whether high or low, as close to his own as possible. * * * I believe there is not a man here who knows anything of his writings, who has not been made thereby a better, as well as a wiser, kinder, and nobler man."
The object of this volume is to present in a compact form-alphabetically arranged for ready reference-a selection of the Best Thoughts of Charles Dickens. It is only a great genius-one which has identified itself with the reading millions-that will bear such a test. But when an author has become a fountain of phrases and characters, and for more than thirty-five years tinged our current literature with his personages and phraseology-when Pickwick and the Wellers; Pecksniff and Mark Tapley; Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness; Peggotty and Barkis; Susan Nipper and Dot; Captain Cuttle and Wal'r; Sairey Gamp and Mrs. Harris; Micawber and Mr. Turveydrop: Little Nell, "Jo," and Paul; nay, the entire roll of fourteen hundred and twenty-five creations of his fancy, have become "as household words "-a collection of the "Best Thoughts" of such an author will be neither unwelcome nor useless to those who admire the existing monuments of his literary labors.
A compilation of this kind, indeed, has long been a want, for Charles Dickens has so forcibly impressed his strong individualities upon all he has written, that there is scarcely a profession, or trade, or stratum of society, or subject, which, touched by his artistic pen, has not received some new light or shadow that makes the picture more vivid than before. Hence, he who reads simply to converse well or quote aptly, or he who would
"Steal a thought and clip it round its edge.
And challenge him whose 'twas, to swear to it,"
will find within these pages that which concerns every theme in life.
