Great Expectations Quotes

Find the perfect quote to float your boat. Shmoop breaks down key quotations from Great Expectations.

Society and Class Quotes

I had heard of Miss Havisham up town—everybody for miles round, had heard of Miss Havisham up town—as an immensely rich and grim lady who lived in a large and dismal house barricaded against ro...

Dreams, Hopes, and Plans Quotes

Whenever I watched the vessels standing out to sea with their white sails spread, I somehow thought of Miss Havisham and Estella; and whenever the light struck aslant, afar off, upon a cloud or sai...

Wealth Quotes

At those times, I would decide conclusively that my disaffection to dear old Joe and the forge, was gone, and that I was growing up in a fair way to be partners with Joe and to keep company with Bi...

Friendship Quotes

"But I did mind you, Pip," he returned, with tender simplicity. "When I offered to your sister to keep company, and to be asked in church at such times as she was willing and ready to come to the f...

Love Quotes

"If I could only get myself to fall in love with you—you don't mind my speaking so openly to such an old acquaintance?""Oh dear, not at all!" said Biddy. "Don't mind me.""If I could only get myse...

Innocence Quotes

"Well," said he, "I believe you. You'd be but a fierce young hound indeed, if at your time of life you could help to hunt a wretched warmint, hunted as near death and dunghill as this poor wretched...

Lies and Deceit Quotes

"He says, no varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself." (22.52)

Time Quotes

"On this day of the year, long before you were born, this heap of decay," stabbing with her crutched stick at the pile of cobwebs on the table but not touching it, "was brought here. It and I have...

Contrasting Regions Quotes

Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gain...

Criminality Quotes

They took up several obviously wrong people, and they ran their heads very hard against wrong ideas, and persisted in trying to fit the circumstances to the ideas, instead of trying to extract idea...