Famous Quotations from Charles Dickens

Hello. I'm Gill at engVid, and today's lesson is on an English author, a novelist who...

He wrote novels, works of fiction, and his name was Charles Dickens. You may have heard

of him. You may have read some of his novels or maybe seen film versions of his stories.

So, he was a Victorian novelist living in the 19th century, and he was very, very popular

at the time, and he's still very popular now. He's often on the syllabus for exams that

people take in English literature, and his novels are very interesting, very unusual

characters sometimes, but very, very human stories about people in everyday situations,

people with problems and trying to resolve them. So, they are very human stories. There's

often a bit of a mystery involved which is only resolved at the end of the story. So,

what I'm going to do is to give you some quotations from some of his novels. One, two, three,

four, five. Five different novels, so five different quotations, and I'll just comment

a little bit on each one. Because he was writing in the 19th century, his style of writing,

it's fairly straightforward. It may seem a little bit strange sometimes. Some of the

words are a bit different from how they are today, but mostly it's fairly straightforward

to read and to understand. Okay. So, let's have a look, then, at the first one. So, nice

and simple to begin with. "The office is one thing, and private life is another." So, that

seems quite a modern thing to me to say, because people who work in offices today, maybe they...

Some people prefer to keep their work life separate from their private life. Other people

prefer to mix... Mix things up a bit, but this is a character in this novel called Great

Expectations who is one type of person in the office, but when they're at home in their

private life with their family, they're a different type of person. They may be a bit

more relaxed, perhaps, in private life, but a little bit more controlled in the office.

Okay? So, that's an interesting thought. So, Great Expectations, one of Dickens' best-known

novels, published in 1861. Okay, so the next one. "Women don't always tell the truth about

their age." So, that's rather interesting. I don't know whether... I think in Dickens'

time there was a certain attitude to women that was a little bit, perhaps, a bit of thinking of

women as rather separate, because women lived different kinds of lives in those days. They

often didn't have a profession, they didn't work, they didn't earn money, they didn't have the same

rights, at least in the UK that women have today. There was much less equality, so that maybe it's

a little bit patronizing to talk about women in this way. Why should women talk about their age

anyway? Why would people ask them about their age to tell the truth? What he's saying is women...

It's a nice way to say women sometimes lie about their age, but why would they have to talk about

it anyway? Sometimes on my channel, people ask me, "How old are you?" And in the UK, that's rather

a rude thing to say, to ask. It's not the sort of question you would normally ask. Only someone in

doing a job might ask you how old you are. If they have to fill a form in for some official purpose

in the UK, they might ask you how old you are, and you're expected to reply truthfully.

But normally in social interaction, people don't say, "How old are you?" Not to men either,

men or women. But I suppose there's a bit of a joke, a bit of a tradition that women

always knock a few years off their age if they do say what their age is, but normally it shouldn't

be necessary to say how old you are anyway. So people who ask me on my channel, I don't answer

because it's not the sort of question, it's not a polite question. I know in other societies it's

different, and it's okay to ask that question. So there we are. Women don't always tell the truth

about their age, and that's from a novel called "The Old Curiosity Shop". It's a shop where they

sell all sorts of different strange things, and that was published in 1841, 20 years earlier than

that one. Okay. Then the next one, "There is a wisdom of the head and a wisdom of the heart."

So that's quite a deep, profound thing to say. I think it's probably true.

So, the wisdom of the head is using your logic, thinking things out logically,

but there's a wisdom of the heart which is more instinctive, something, an instinct that you feel

if something is right or not right. And I suppose it's good to have a balance between the head and

the heart, and think things through, but also listen to your feelings and your instincts,

and perhaps try to get the balance between the two, and not be all of one or all of the other,

but a combination. Okay. So that's from a novel called "Hard Times". A lot of these novels are

very long, but "Hard Times" is a bit shorter, so that's possibly a good one if you're looking

for a Dickens novel to read for the first time. Maybe "Hard Times" is a shorter one

that's quicker to get through, and that was published in 1854.

Right, so we have a rather long quotation here, all about money. So, this is a character in

the novel who... He's not very good with money, actually, so it's interesting that he's talking

about it in this way. He's always running out of money, so... But he knows how important it is to

try not to get into debt, or to try not to spend more than you have, and then have to borrow. So,

he's saying annual income, £20. In those days, I suppose that was an annual income. Nowadays,

it might be you'd earn £20 in an hour, or in half an hour, or even less, depending on what

your profession is. So, in those days, in a year, you might earn £20. That's inflation.

So, okay. Annual income, £20. Annual expenditure, what you spend... This is what you earn, income.

Expenditure, what you spend. Annual expenditure, 19, 19, 6. So, that means £19, 19 shillings,

and six pence. If you've seen my video about English money, which includes something about

the old currency before we decimalised the currency in the 1970s... If you haven't seen

that video, you might like to watch it because I talk about the old currency, which was pounds,

shillings, and pence, whereas today it's just pounds and pence, and there are 100 pence in a

pound. At this time, there were shillings as well in between the pounds and the pennies.

So, what he's saying is... That's the pound symbol, and he's saying 19 pounds, 19 shillings,

and 6 pennies. And you might think, "What is this? Shillings?" But there were 20 shillings in a pound.

Okay. And then 6 pennies, there were 12 pennies in a shilling. So, this is like 20 pounds minus

6 pennies. This adds up to nearly 20 pounds, but it's just 6 pennies less than 20 pounds. Okay?

But if you've earned 20 pounds and then you spend 6 pennies less than 20 pounds,

that means you still have 6 pence left. You're in credit. Okay? So, that's a good thing. It

means you have some money left at the end of the year. You haven't spent it all. Okay? It's only

6 pennies, but it's something positive. Okay. But then, the other part, annual income 20 pounds,

annual expenditure 20 pounds ought, which means zero or nought, zero and six, result

misery, because that would mean 20 pounds, no shillings,

but 6 pennies. If you've earned 20 pounds, but then you spend 20 pounds and another 6 pence,

which you don't have, so you've had to borrow it from somewhere, or you are in debt to somebody,

the result of that is misery, because you've spent more money than you've earned.

I think this is a very good lesson for nowadays when people are made to feel that borrowing is

okay, and it's normal, and everybody borrows. It's... It can be disastrous.

That's what happened when the stock market crashed in... When was it? 2008. Too many people

were borrowing too much money. There was too much debt, and the banks collapsed. So, that's the big

example of what can go wrong and result misery. A lot of people lost their jobs. A lot of companies

failed. So, there we are. Very, very wise thing to say, but it's from a character who actually

finds it very difficult himself to have any money left at the end of the year.

So, there we are. So, that was published in 1850, the novel called David Copperfield,

and David Copperfield is the hero of the book. Right. And then finally, I think this is a nice

one to end on. "Sleep, heaven's gift to all its creatures." "Its" meaning heaven's creatures.

Okay? So, sleep is a gift given by God to everybody. Creatures can mean humans, animals,

birds, all... All of them, all of us sleep, and that sleep is a good thing because it restores

you for another day. And if you can't sleep, it's... It's a bad thing. So... And that's from

a novel called Barnaby Rudge, published 1841. Okay. So, I hope that's been... Whether or not

you... You're familiar with the works of Charles Dickens. I don't know how many languages... He's

probably translated into quite a lot of other languages, so you may have read some of his

stories in your own native language. But if you haven't really met Charles Dickens before or read

any of his books, you might like to give them a try. And again, there are film versions of his

stories, so that would be a good introduction to get to know the story first before you read the

examples of his novels. He wrote a lot more than this, but this is just a selection to introduce

to you. Okay. So, I hope you've enjoyed the lesson. Thank you for watching,

and I hope to see you again soon. Bye for now.