Giveaway: 'The Daily Charles Dickens'

Hello, everyone! I'm afraid I've been sadly neglecting this blog in recent weeks. I was busy finishing a book manuscript, which was a real time-sucker for a while. (It's not a book about Dickens, but it does mention him a couple of times!)

So I've gotten far behind and have a lot of catching up to do here. But to thank you all for your patience, I'm kicking off this blog resurgence with a giveaway of the new book The Daily Charles Dickens: A Year of Quotes (The University of Chicago Press, edited by James Kincaid). It's a very interesting little book of daily Dickens quotes, some of which are what you'd expect but others of which are quite surprising. As Kincaid explains in his introduction, his goal was to highlight Dickens's "open-ended play with language and its possibilities." 

If you would like to enter the giveaway, all you have to do is to leave in the comments section one Dickens quotation that you would include if you were compiling a book of daily Dickens quotes. A week from today (November 5), I'll draw one name from all the commenters, and inform the winner. Good luck!

Comments

[Josh Sharpe]

“For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.”

[Elizabeth R]

"It's as well to be kind whenever one can." ~ Martin Chuzzlewit

[Jerry]

"So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise."

[Douglas Westfall]

Few quotes have made me cry like: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

[`Cody]

"What a situation!" cried Miss Squeers. "What is the reason that men fall in love with me, whether I like it or not, and desert their chosen intendeds for my sake?"
"Because they can't help it, Miss," replied the girl; "the reason's the plain."
(If Miss Squeers were the reason, it was very plain.)

Nicholas Nickleby

[Art K]

These are some great quotes and makes me really want to read some more Dickens! Here's mine, one of my favorites: "They were not a handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes were far from being water-proof; their clothes were scanty; and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside of a pawnbroker's. But, they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time; and when they faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the Spirit's torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until the last."

[Tammy Summers]

‘This,’ said Mr. Pickwick, looking round him, ‘this is, indeed, comfort.’ My favorite quote because of its simplicity, yet profoundness, in expressing contentment in being with those you love, and seeing them happy.

[Joel Sutton]

"I would rather that my children, living after me, trudged in the mud, and knew by the general feeling of society that their father was beloved, and had been of some use, than I would for them to ride in their carriages, and know by their banker's books that he was rich." ~ From a speech at Hartford, U.S.A.

[Mark Dooley]

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else.
The Old Curiosity Shop

[Tim Murphy]

"One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it's left behind."
Little Dorrit

[Jerry]

Mark,

I like that one too, but I believe it is from Our Mutual Friend. Rokesmith speaking to Bella.

[Mark Dooley]

I stand corrected, Jerry, apologies.

[Jerry]

Please don't apologize, Mark. I had to look it up myself.

At first I thought, "That had to have been either the Marchioness or Dick Swiveller."

But I couldn't remember which, so I cheated and Googled it.