30+ of the best quotes from "Hard Times"

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 30+ quotes from Hard Times illustrate the lasting power of his words.

The best quotes from Hard Times on social inequality and the price of capitalism

1. "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."

2. "It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse."

3. "'This schoolroom is an immense town, and in it there are a million inhabitants, and only five-and-twenty are starved to death in the streets, in the course of a year."

4. "Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a counter. And if we didn't get to Heaven that way, it was not a politico-economical place, and we had no business there."

5. "It is said that every life has its roses and thorns; there seemed, however, to have been a misadventure or mistake in Stephen's case."

6. "Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts."

7. "Mr. Gradgrind was quite moved by his success, and by this testimony to it."

8. "The factory-bells had need to ring their loudest that morning."

The best quotes from Hard Times on human nature and emotions

1. "It is a dangerous thing to see anything in the sphere of a vain blusterer, before the vain blusterer sees it himself."

2. "He could not have looked a Bully more shorn and forlorn."

3. "Do the wise thing and the kind thing too, and make the best of us and not the worst."

4. "O! Better to have no home in which to lay his head, than to have a home and dread to go to it."

5. "The loneliest of lives, the life of solitude among a familiar crowd."

6. "He had been for many years, a quiet silent man, associating but little with other men, and used to companionship with his own thoughts."

7. "From the beginning, she had sat looking at him fixedly."

8. "'What do I know, father,' said Louisa in her quiet manner, 'of tastes and fancies; of aspirations and affections; of all that part of my nature in which such light things might have been nourished?'"

9. "There was a piece of ornamental water immediately below the parapet, on the other side, into which Mr. James Harthouse had a very strong inclination to pitch Mr. Thomas Gradgrind Junior."

The best quotes from Hard Times on education and learning

1. "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."

2. "The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim."

3. "You are to be in all things regulated and governed,' said the gentleman, 'by fact."

4. "There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart."

The best quotes from Hard Times on family and relationships

1. "Love was made on these occasions in the form of bracelets."

2. "He went to work in this preparatory lesson, not unlike Morgiana in the Forty Thieves: looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they contained."

3. "He thought of the number of girls and women she had seen marry, how many homes with children in them she had seen grow up around her, how she had contentedly pursued her own lone quite path-for him."

4. 'My dear Louisa,' said he, 'you abundantly repay my care. Kiss me, my dear girl.'"

5. "Mr. Gradgrind, apprised of his wife's decease, made an expedition from London, and buried her in a business-like manner. He then returned with promptitude to the national cinder-heap."

The best quotes from Hard Times on society and life

1. "The last trumpet ever to be sounded shall blow even algebra to wreck."

2. "These people, as they listened to the friendly voice that read aloud–there was always some such ready to help them–stared at the characters which meant so much with a vague awe and respect..."

3. "The dreams of childhood—its airy fables; its graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adornments of the world beyond."

4. "Upon my word and honour I seem to be fated, and destined, and ordained, to live in the midst of things that I am never to hear the last of."

5. "The emphasis was helped by the speaker's hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head... covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie."