Hard Times by acclaimed English author Charles Dickens is set in the fictional Coketown, home to cruel factory owners and the workers they mistreat. The novel, published in 1854, captures the harsh realities of the Industrial Revolution. Among the main characters is Thomas Gradgrind, a schoolmaster who promotes practicality and a fact-based educational philosophy based in utilitarianism. His children, Louisa and Tom, suffer from his emotionally stifling methods. Mr. Gradgrind's business associate, Josiah Bounderby, is a wealthy, self-made mill owner and banker who epitomizes the hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of the Industrial Age.
Hard Times examines the social and economic disparities and dehumanizing effects of industrial capitalism in 19th century England. Dickens, known for classic works such as A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, and A Tale of Two Cities, is widely credited with spurring social change in the Victorian Era. These 40+ quotes from Hard Times illustrate the lasting power of his words.
The best quotes from Hard Times on social inequality & capitalism
“Any capitalist who had made sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence always professed to wonder why the sixty thousand nearest Hands didn't each make sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence.”
“Tell Josiah Bounderby of Coketown … but let us have hard-headed, solid-fisted people.”
“The only difference between us and the professors of virtue or benevolence is that we know it is all meaningless, and say so, while they know it equally and will never say so.”
“But the sun itself, however beneficent, was less kind to Coketown than hard frost, and rarely looked intently into any of its closer regions.”
“There was a piece of ornamental water below the parapet, and he had a very strong inclination to pitch Mr. Bounderby into it.”
“Sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, “I cannot say that I have heard him precisely snore.”
“Any capitalist who had made sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence always professed to wonder why the sixty thousand nearest Hands didn't each make sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence.”
The best quotes from Hard Times on education, upbringing & utilitarian philosophy
“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.”
“You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.”
“Stick to Facts, sir!”
“What is called Taste, is only another name for Fact.”
“You are never to fancy.”
“If he had only learnt a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more.”
“‘In the name of wonder, idleness, and folly!’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘What do you do here?’”
The best quotes from Hard Times on identity, duty & emotional suppression
“I was tired, father. I have been tired a long time.”
“Say not another word. You are childish. I will hear no more.”
“I know that very well. I was a nuisance, an incumbrance, and a pest.”
“My mother? Bolted, ma’am!”
“Do it at once … it’s always been my motto from a child.”
“She was the most wonderful woman for prowling about the house; her extraordinary facility of locomotion suggested the wild idea that she was everywhere at once.”
“He had never known before the strength of the want in his heart, nor the immense relief that had been poured into it by drops through such small means.”
The best quotes from Hard Times on memory, loss & regret
“How could you give me life, and take from me all the inappreciable things that raise it from the state of conscious death?”
“Where are the graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart?”
“What have you done with the garden that should have bloomed once, in this great wilderness here?”
“Depth answers only to depth.”
“He hardened her again; and the moment shot away to mingle with all the lost opportunities that are drowned there.”
“There is a wisdom of the head, and there is a wisdom of the heart.”
“Where are the graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart?”
The best quotes from Hard Times on hypocrisy, pretension & appearance
“It was very remarkable that a young gentleman should be a hypocrite, but it was certainly the case with Tom.”
“It was very strange that a young gentleman who had never been left to his own guidance should be incapable at last of governing himself.”
“It was altogether unaccountable that a young gentleman whose imagination had been strangled in his cradle should still be inconvenienced by its ghost.”
“He had not much hair. One might have fancied he had talked it off; what was left was constantly blown about by his windy boastfulness.”
“Then came Mr. Gradgrind, eminently practical, who could furnish more tabular statements derived from his own personal experience than any man alive.”
“Fact, fact, fact! Everywhere in the material aspect of the town; fact, fact, fact! Everywhere in the immaterial.”
The best quotes from Hard Times on compassion, kindness & moral choice
“Do the wise thing and the kind thing too, and make the best of us and not the worst.”
“Make the best of us, not the worst.”
“It is said that every life has its roses and thorns; yet it seemed that somebody else had become possessed of his roses, and he of their thorns.”
“The day grew darker and colder; but it was a softer gloom and a milder frost, for the human heart had been warmed.”
“She stood alone, looking down the dark street, thinking of others before herself.”
The best quotes from Hard Times on endurance, despair & transcending hardship
“I pulled through it, though nobody threw me out a rope.”
“I was so sickly that I was always moaning and groaning.”
“I am sick of my life, Loo. I hate it altogether, and I hate everybody except you.”
“When I was a boy, I thought I could shape the world with logic. Now I see it shapes me with pain.”
“There was a deadly kind of repose on everything, which made it wear the look of having been at work for ever, and of being as incapable of change as the iron it wrought.”
“If ever I had a child of my own, I would teach her to hope—if only to spite the world that taught me not to.”
“I pulled through it, though nobody threw me out a rope.”
