Best quotes from The Pickwick Papers

She never went out herself, and ... was apt to consider it an act of domestic treason, if anybody else took the liberty of doing what she couldn't.

Most people are when they've little to do and less to get.

Lawyers hold that there are two kinds of particularly bad witnesses–a reluctant witness, and a too-willing witness.

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

Dumb as a drum vith a hole in it, sir.

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 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.

Christmas was close at hand, in all his bluff and hearty honesty; it was the season of hospitality, merriment, and open-heartedness; the old year was preparing, like an ancient philosopher, to call his friends around him, and amidst the sound of feasting and revelry to pass gently and calmly away.

And a wery good name it is; only one I know that ain't got a nickname to it.

"There is no deception now, Mr. Weller. Tears," said Job, with a look of momentary slyness, "tears are not the only proofs of distress, nor the best ones".

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.

Poetry makes life what lights and music do the stage.