Quotes · verified word for word in the text
Great Expectations quotes
14 quotes from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #1400 (public domain in the USA), the text this site’s reader shows. Each quote is copied exactly from that text and links to its passage in the reader; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against the reader’s text.
“Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.”
— Spoken by a character · Chapter XL
I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.
Ask no questions, and you’ll be told no lies.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter II
And if you could say that to me then, you will not hesitate to say that to me now,—now, when suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but—I hope—into a better shape.
— Estella · Chapter LIX
In the little world in which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice.
You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter XLIV
My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter XLIV
O God bless you, God forgive you!
— Spoken by a character · Chapter XLIV
It don’t signify to you with your brilliant lookout, but as to myself, my guiding-star always is, ‘Get hold of portable property’.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter XXIV
Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.
Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her.
— Spoken by a character · Chapter XXIX
In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.