Charles Dickens' Great Expectations Quotes

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the novel.

“With this boy! Why he is a common laboring-boy!”

I thought I overheard Miss Havisham answer—only it seemed so unlikely—‘Well? You can break his heart.’

‘What do you play, boy?’ asked Estella of myself, with the greatest disdain.

‘Nothing but beggar my neighbor, Miss’

‘Beggar him,’ said Miss Havisham to Estella. So we sat down to cards.

David Lean's Great Expectations

“Lookee here Pip, at what is said to you by a true friend. If you can’t get to be oncommon through going straight, you’ll never do it through going crooked. So don’t tell no more on ‘em, Pip, and live well and die happy.”

“That was a memorable day for me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”

“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts”

“Once for all; I knew to my sorrow... that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I loved her"

“[Miss Havisham] drew an arm around my neck, and drew my head close down to hers as she sat in the chair. ‘Love her, love her, love her! How does she use you?’

Before I could answer (if I could have answered so difficult a question at all), she repeated, ‘Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces—and as it gets older and stronger it will tear deeper—love her, love her!”

David Lean's Great Expectations

“’What a hopeful disposition you have!’ said I, gratefully admiring his cheery ways.

‘I ought to have,’ said Herbert, ‘for I have not much else. ‘”

“We produced a bundle of pens, a copious supply of ink, and a goodly show of writing and blotting paper. For there was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationary.”

“As he pretended not to see me, I pretended not to see him. It was a very lame pretense on both sides.”

“You will get me out of your thoughts in a week”

“Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here…You have been in ever prospect I have ever seen since—on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with… 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. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you’

In what ecstasy of unhappiness I got these broken words out of myself, I don’t know. The rhapsody welled up within me, like blood from an inward wound, and gushed out. I held her hand to my lips some lingering moments, and so I left her.”

David Lean's Great Expectations. Photo from Hollywood.com

“We can no more see the bottom of the next few hours, than we can see the bottom of this river what I catches hold of. Nor yet we can’t no more hold their tide than I can hold this. And it’s run through my fingers and gone, you see!’ holding up his dripping hand.”

I'll have a review for you soon! Or maybe I won't. I'm not sure what to say about this novel...