Great Expectations first appeared in weekly instalments in Dickens' journal All The Year Round between 1860 and 1861 and was published in three volumes in 1861 by Chapman & Hall. Charles Dickens tells the story of Pip, an orphan in the early decades of19th-century England, who is raised in poverty and who coming unexpectedly into a fortune pursues his dream of becoming a gentleman.
Hero of Great Expectations Pip comes to confront his ingratitude and to learn to appreciate the people who he was quick to disavow. The life quotations listed here come from the original first volume of Great Expectations.
Great Expectations Quotes
In the first volume of Great Expectations the reader sees Pip, who is raised by his cruel sister and kind, if simple, husband, meeting and helping an escaped convict - a character who is to play a major role in Pip's future life.The orphan is later taken on by wealthy, eccentric spinster, Miss Havisham, as her companion and meets Miss Havisham's adopted daughter, Estella, for whom he develops a lifelong longing.
His dream of becoming a gentleman and an equal to Estella seems to come true when he is informed that he came "into a handsome property" and was to "be brought up as a gentleman - in a word, as a young fellow of great expectations". Life quotations from the first volume of Charles Dickens masterpiece include:
- Few people known what secrecy there is in the young under terror.
- [She] had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself. (Pip about his sister)
- What is detestable in a pig, is more detestable in a boy. (Mr Wopsle to Pip)
- I was too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.
- 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.
- The secret was such an old one now, had so grown into me and become part of myself, that I could not tear it away.
- Scattered wits take a long time picking up.
- Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better. A proverb that means that it is better to keep silent than boast.
- My dream was out; my wild fancy was surpassed by sober reality.
- I had come into great expectations from a mysterious patron.
- Farewell, monotonous acquaintances of my childhood, henceforth I was for London and greatness.
- Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlaying our hard hearts.
- The mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me.
Life Quotations From Charles Dickens
In the first part of Great Expectations Pip becomes aware of himself, his position in the world, his desires and his guilt. In his introduction in the Penguin Classics edition of Great Expectations, David Trotter agrees that Pip's "meeting with Estella and Miss Havisham is the birth of a new concept of self: it dates the first perception of self as deficient, as defined by lack and hence as subject to desire".
Life quotations were taken from Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, Penguin Classics, 2008. With an introduction by David Trotter; Edited and with Notes by Charlotte Mitchell.
For more Dickens quotes, see his Quotes on Love: Pip, Estella, Unrequited Affection and Rejection; and Dickens' sayings on money and life from volume II of Great Expectations, Quotes on Money and Life; for quotes from A Christmas Carol see Ebenezer Scrooge and Bah Humbug.
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