Charles Dickens Quotes About Ghosts

• An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

  Charles Dickens

  Halloween, Creativity, Ideas

• Come in, -- come in! and know me better, man! I am the Ghost of Christmas Present. Look upon me! You have never seen the like of me before!

  Charles Dickens

  Men, Looks, Ghost

  Charles Dickens (2014). “A Christmas Carol (mini comic): (Mini Comics)”, p.11, Daniel Turner

• But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,' faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!

  Charles Dickens

  Ocean, Men, Hands

  Charles Dickens (2009). “The Complete Works of Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books”, p.17, Cosimo, Inc.

• I have heard it said that as we keep our birthdays when we are alive, so the ghosts of dead people, who are not easy in their graves, keep the day they died upon.

  Charles Dickens

  People, Scary, Alive

  Charles Dickens (1872). “A Cyclopedia of the Best Thoughts of Charles Dickens”, p.209

• It is a silent, shady place, with a paved courtyard so full of echoes, that sometimes I am tempted to believe that faint responses to the noises of old times linger there yet, and that these ghosts of sound haunt my footsteps as I pace it up and down.

  Charles Dickens

  Believe, Echoes, Sound

  Charles Dickens (1851). “The posthumous papers of the Pickwick club. The old curiosity shop and other tales”

• It had grown darker as they talked, and the wind was sawing and the sawdust was whirling outside paler windows. The underlying churchyard was already settling into deep dim shade, and the shade was creeping up to the housetops among which they sat. "As if," said Eugene, "as if the churchyard ghosts were rising."

  Charles Dickens

  Wind, Sawdust, Shade

  Charles Dickens (1865). “Our Mutual Friend”, p.112

• Day was breaking at Plashwater Weir Mill Lock. Stars were yet visible, but there was dull light in the east that was not the light of night. The moon had gone down, and a mist crept along the banks of the river, seen through which the trees were the ghosts of trees, and the water was the ghost of water. This earth looked spectral, and so did the pale stars: while the cold eastern glare, expressionless as to heat or colour, with the eye of the firmament quenched, might have been likened to the stare of the dead.

  Charles Dickens

  Nature, Stars, Eye

  Charles Dickens (1873). “A Cyclopedia of the Best Thoughts of Charles Dickens”, p.317

• "Ghost of the Future," he exclaimed, "I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?"

  Charles Dickens

  Heart, Men, Bears

  Charles Dickens (1858). “A Christmas Carol”, p.74

• He was the meekest of his sex, the mildest of little men. He sidled in and out of a room, to take up the less space. He walked as softly as the Ghost in Hamlet, and more slowly. He carried his head on one side, partly in modest depreciation of himself, partly in modest propitiation of everybody else.

  Charles Dickens

  Sex, Character, Men

  Charles Dickens (1858). “The Personal History of David Copperfield ... With Frontispiece by H. K. Browne”, p.6

• One disagreeable result of whispering is that it seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence, haunted by the ghosts of sound - strange cracks and tickings, the rustling of garments that have no substance in them, and the tread of dreadful feet that would leave no mark on the sea-sand or the winter snow.

  Charles Dickens

  Winter, Feet, Sea

  Charles Dickens (1853). “Bleak House”, p.318

• It was a long and gloomy night that gathered on me, haunted by the ghosts of many hopes, of many dear remembrances, many errors, many unavailing sorrows and regrets.

  Charles Dickens

  Regret, Night, Errors

  Charles Dickens (1850). “The Personal History of David Copperfield”, p.577

• It is required of every man," the ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death.

  Charles Dickens

  Men, Fellow Man, Spirit

  Charles Dickens (1858). “A Christmas Carol”, p.18

• Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die?

  Charles Dickens

  Heart, Men, Wicked

  Charles Dickens (1858). “A Christmas Carol”, p.58

• There's more of gravey than grave about you, whatever you are!" - Scrooge, referring to Marley's ghost which he believes is a hallucination from food poisoning

  Charles Dickens

  Believe, Scrooge, Hallucinations

• The meagre lighthouse all in white, haunting the seaboard, as if it were the ghost of an edifice that had once had colour and rotundity, dripped melancholy tears after its late buffeting by the waves.

  Charles Dickens

  White, Tears, Haunting

  CHARLES DICKENS (1867). “LITTLE DORRIT”, p.412

• Blackened skeleton arms of wood by the wayside pointed upward to the convent, as if the ghosts of former travellers, overwhelmed by the snow, haunted the scene of their distress. Icicle-hung caves and cellars built for refuges from sudden storms, were like so many whispers of the perils of the place; never-resting wreaths and mazes of mist wandered about, hunted by a moaning wind; and snow, the besetting danger of the mountain, against which all its defences were taken, drifted sharply down.

  Charles Dickens

  Taken, Skeletons, Wind

  Charles Dickens (2009). “The Complete Works of Charles Dickens: Little Dorrit”, p.448, Cosimo, Inc.

• There is probably a smell of roasted chestnuts and other good comfortable things all the time, for we are telling Winter Stories - Ghost Stories, or more shame for us - round the Christmas fire; and we have never stirred, except to draw a little nearer to it.

  Charles Dickens

  Winter, Smell, Ghost Stories

  Charles Dickens (1868). “Christmas Stories from "Household Words" and "All the Year Round"”, p.11

• For who can wonder that man should feel a vague belief in tales of disembodied spirits wandering through those places which they once dearly affected, when he himself, scarcely less separated from his old world than they, is for ever lingering upon past emotions and bygone times, and hovering, the ghost of his former self, about the places and people that warmed his heart of old?

  Charles Dickens

  Heart, Past, Men

  Charles Dickens, Peter Preston (1998). “The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Other Stories”, p.13, Wordsworth Editions

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