No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.

—Charles Dickens

life others purpose uselessness

About Charles Dickens

Portrait of Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens ( ; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and journalist. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by...

More quotations from Charles Dickens

Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

—Charles Dickens

Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.

—Charles Dickens

To be shelterless and alone in the open country, hearing the wind moan and watching for day through the whole long weary night; to listen to the falling rain, and crouch for warmth beneath the lee of some old barn or rick, or in the hollow of a tree; are dismal things — but not so dismal as the wandering . . . where beds and sleepers are by thousands; a houseless rejected creature.

—Charles Dickens

Train up a fig tree in the way it should go, and when you are old sit under the shade of it.

—Charles Dickens

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.

—Charles Dickens

More quotations tagged with “purpose”

You’ve heard of people calling in sick. You may have called in sick a few times yourself. But have you ever thought about calling in well? It’d go like this: You’d get the boss on the line and say, “Listen, I’ve been sick ever since I started working here, but today I’m well and I won’t be in anymore.” Call in well.

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Whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, secretly all nature seeks God and works toward him.

—Meister Eckhart

If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.

—Albert Camus

life history purpose meaning

Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.

—Walker Evans

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Don’t do it. Don’t go to that job you hate. Do something you love today. Ride a roller coaster. Swim in the ocean. Go to the airport and get on the next flight to anywhere just for the fun of it. Maybe stop a spinning globe with your finger and then plan a trip to that very spot; even if it’s in the middle of the ocean you can go by boat. Eat some type of ethnic food you’ve never even heard of. Stop a stranger and ask her to explain her greatest fears and her secret hopes and aspirations in detail and then tell her you care because she is a human being. Sit down on the sidewalk and make pictures with colorful chalk. Close your eyes and try to see the world with your nose—allow smells to be your vision. Catch up on your sleep. Call an old friend you haven’t seen in years. Roll up your pant legs and walk into the sea. See a foreign film. Feed squirrels. Do anything! Something! Because you start a revolution one decision at a time, with each breath you take. Just don’t go back to that miserable place you go every day.

—Matthew Quick in Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

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History

7 Mar 2014 Added