"Micawber" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... got a general hearing Dickens had fame and mighty influence. It was in the eighteen thirties that the self-made son of an impecunious navy clerk, who did not live in vain since he sat for a portrait of Micawber and the father of the Marshalsea, turned from journalism to that higher reporting which means the fiction of manners and humors. All the gods had prepared him for his destiny. Sympathy he had for the poor, ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... is, that unless relief comes shortly he cannot last more than a fortnight. After this his mind seems to have begun to wander; he makes frequent and unusual blunders in his diary. The last words he wrote were that he was waiting, like Mr. Micawber, for something to turn up, and that, though starving on nardoo seed was by no means unpleasant, yet he would prefer to have a little fat and ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... erupt in earnest. He declared that he would override the court of criminal appeals "if men enough can be found in Texas to do it"—gave an excellent imitation of an anarchist who is hungering for canned gore. After this blood-to-horses'-bridles bluff he grew quiescent—waited, Micawber-like, for something to turn up. And still Dan Stuart didn't say a word. Then "our heroic young Christian governor" broke out in a new place. The legislature was convened in extraordinary session to prevent ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Bigod. John Fenwick, an unlucky friend of the Lambs, an anticipatory Micawber, of whom we know too little, and seem likely to find out little more. Lamb mentions him again in the essay on "Chimney Sweepers," and in that on "Newspapers," in his capacity as editor of The Albion, for which Lamb wrote its extinguishing epigram in the summer of 1801. There ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... anklets, toe, finger, nose and ear rings, girdles and arm-bands of gold, silver, copper and brass, and this jewelry is worn by the women of India as the best of investments. They turn their money into it instead of patronizing banks. As Mr. Micawber would have expressed it, they convert ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... He was fond of putting himself and his own people into his books, and of drawing his scenes and his characters from real life, sometimes only slightly disguised. Tradition says that he built both Mr. Micawber and Mr. Turveydrop out of his own father; that Mrs. Nickleby was based upon his own mother; and that his wife, who was the Dora of 'Copperfield' in the beginning of their married life, became in later years the Flora of 'Little Dorrit.' The elder Dickens had unquestionably some of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... behind me, my dear boy," he cried, as we reached the sidewalk and turned our faces up Wall Street toward Broadway. "Fifteen hours to live my own life! No care until ten o'clock to-morrow. Lovely life, my dear Major, when you think of it. Ah, old Micawber was right—income one pound, expense one pound ten shillings; result, misery: income one pound ten, expense one pound, outcome, happiness! What a curse this Street is to those who abuse its power for good; half of them trying to keep out of jail and the other half fighting to keep out of the ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... habit of former days, and to cook only twice a week. In fact, they were evidently passing through one of those monetary crises to which we become used when reading the annals of the Balzacs, and which irresistibly remind the reader of similar affairs in the Micawber family. ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... a small, a very small individual, but possessed of a large stock of clothes, which he was evidently glad to have an opportunity of exhibiting. He first came up with a souwester on his head, the wrong end foremost, and a pair of canvas shoes on his feet,—a sort of miniature Micawber, or first-class cockney "salt," about to breast the briny. This small person's long nose, large ears, and open mouth added to the ludicrousness of his appearance. As the decks were wet and the morning cold, he found the garb somewhat unsuitable, and dived below, to come up again in strong ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... nerves at present. But she says I'm to do just as I think best in regard to them. She thinks I'm foolish—in fact, she says so—but I think I understand her better than any one else. Down in her heart she knows I'm doing the right thing. We'll wait, like old Micawber, for something to turn up. If it doesn't turn up in a reasonable length of time, then I'll consider what is best to do ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... almost the enthusiasm of a political campaign. Each one of those authors had ardent admirers and partisans. The characters of Dickens became household companions. Every one was looking for the counterpart of Micawber or Sam Weller, Pecksniff or David Copperfield, and had little trouble in finding them either in the family circle or ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... him, in the blacking warehouse at Hungerford Stairs, or quite forgave those who sent him to an occupation he so loathed. Much of "David Copperfield" is familiar in our mouths as household words, and Swinburne has maintained that Micawber ranks with Dick Swiveller as one of the greatest characters in all Dickens's novels. "Copperfield" comes midway in the great list of works by ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... to wait for it. I'm not like Mr. Micawber. I'm going out and turn up something for myself. There's one thing I can do, and that's manicure. I could get a place at that, maybe," and Alice looked at her pretty and well-kept nails, while Ruth ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... man who travelled two hundred miles to bring her letters and the message that she is, as Mr. Micawber would put it, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... one and the same character: harshness and gentleness, manliness and childishness, apathy and fierce endeavor. Men who, twenty years ago, would not cease their shoveling to save their lives, now play in the streets with children. Their long, Micawber-like waiting after the exhaustion of the placers has brought on an exaggerated form of dotage. I heard a group of brawny pioneers in the street eagerly discussing the quantity of tail required for a boy's kite; and one graybeard undertook the sport of flying it, volunteering the ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... easily have ascertained if you had taken greater advantage of what is really the only thing to be said in favour of Battersea; namely, that it is within easy reach of Adelphi Terrace. However, I have no doubt that when Wilkins Micawber junior grew up and became eminent in Australia, references were made to his narrow puritan home; so I do not complain. If you had told the truth, nobody ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Micawber philosophy. He would have nothing to do with it. He did not believe corn would grow without being planted, or that pouts would ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... Mr. Micawber. 2. The great event occurred soon after. 3. The boy stood there with dizzy brain. 4. The Spaniard's shot went whing! whing! 5. Catiline shall no longer plot her ruin. 6. A sincere word was never utterly lost. 7. It stands written so. 8. Venus was yet the morning star. 9. You must speak thus. ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... nearly six years, and the sale of his books goes on as it did during his life. The certainty with which his novels are found in every house—the familiarity of his name in all English-speaking countries—the popularity of such characters as Mrs. Gamp, Micawber, and Pecksniff, and many others whose names have entered into the English language and become well-known words—the grief of the country at his death, and the honours paid to him at his funeral,—all testify to his popularity. Since the last book he wrote himself, I doubt whether any book ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... other vicissitudes of his own life. In it there is an attack upon the system of model prisons; but the chief interest is found in his wonderful portraitures of varied and opposite characters: the Peggottys, Steerforth, the inimitable Micawber, Betsy Trotwood; Agnes, the lovely and lovable; Mr. Dick, with such noble method in his madness; Dora, the child-wife; the simple Traddles, and Uriah Heep, the ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... the gentlemen had stabled and fed the horses and were ready, Karl and I between us had arranged a bright cosy little apartment with a capital tea-dinner on the table. After this meal there were pipes and toddy, and as I could not retire, like Mrs. Micawber at David Copperfield's supper party, into the adjoining bedroom and sit by myself in the cold, I made the best of the somewhat dense clouds of smoke with which I was soon surrounded, and listened to the fragmentary plans for the next day. Then we ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... her even to a dog; he would talk of her by the hour to his dog. Yet—lest we pity this real despair—let us glance at one of this man's letters. How could such vulgar weakness, such corrupt and loathsome sentimentality, such maudlin Micawber-penitence, yet feel so much! No easy task to judge of a misery too perverse for pity, too sincere for ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... 'I'll never desert Mrs Micawber,' interrupted Teddy, with a gurgling sob. Tom immediately rolled him off the step into the wet grass below; and by the time this slight skirmish was over, the jingle of teaspoons suggested refreshments of a more agreeable sort. In former times the little girls waited on the ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Portsmouth, but spent nearly all his life in London. His father was a conscientious man, but lacked capacity for getting a livelihood. In consequence, the boy's youth was much darkened by poverty. It has been supposed that he pictured his father in the character of "Micawber." He began his active life as a lawyer's apprentice; but soon left this employment to become a reporter. This occupation he followed from 1831 to 1836. His first book was entitled "Sketches of London Society, by Boz." This was followed, in 1837, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... disgrace very much, so, leaving a part of her money to repair damages, she packed up her dilapidated wardrobe, and, making Hepsey promise to report progress from time to time, Christie went back to Mrs. Flint's to compose her mind and be ready la Micawber "for ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... be paid for your work before you accomplish it. As soon as once your work is finished you ought to be promptly paid; but to receive your lucre one minute before it is due, is to tempt Providence to make a Micawber of you. Goldsmith, of course, without any temptation being needed, was the very ideal Micawber of letters, and the result of paying him beforehand was that he had, simply, to be popped into the mill by force, ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... keep going till something turns up," she said to herself; and she followed this Micawber advice to the letter. She came to the end of the grounds which had belonged to the burned house and the deserted stable; she passed on, between a stretch of thin woodland and a grove of giant pines; and there she came upon a cross-road. She ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... when "the man with the idea" will knock at his door. Unlike the British naval officer charged with the duty of examining inventions to win the War, who is described by Guedalla as sitting like an inverted Micawber "waiting for something to turn down," he is waiting for something to turn up. He does more than wait; he works twenty hours a day trying ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... objections to soap, brought us our beer, and then we looked around. There was music, not very good, only a few people smoking china pipes and not even drinking beer, a few idly reading the paper, and a general air over everybody of Mr. Micawber waiting for something to ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... And in his drowsy mind just roused from dreams, there turned and turned the queer nonsensical refrain: "I never—never—will desert Mr. Micawber. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... pasting labels on pots of blacking. All of this wretched experience he has written in David Copperfield, and the sad scenes of the debtors' prison he has put into Pickwick Papers and into Little Dorrit. Even Mrs. Pipchin, of whom he told in Dombey and Son, and Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield, were real people whom he knew in these years of poverty and despair. Dickens's life at this time was so miserable that always afterward he dreaded to speak of it, and never could bear even to walk in the street where the blacking warehouse ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... sort of jury, among my friends, I have to persuade, I am not inclined in this sketch to launch out into panegyrics upon Mr. Micawber and Mrs. Gamp and Mr. Pecksniff and Betsy Trotwood and Bill Sikes and Dick Swiveller and Bob Sawyer and Sam Weller and Mark Tapley and Old Scrooge. The mere mention of these names, which, to some, would suggest the music ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... portion of our population is getting to be mighty independent. Instead of waiting, Micawber-like, for something (a man) to turn up they are going to work to turn it up themselves. They would rather make a living for themselves than have a man to make it for them. They are teaching schools, operating telegraph instruments and telephones, clerking, keeping ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... leased a cottage at Alphington, a village about a mile and a half away from Exeter, for his father and mother, who resided there for three and a half years. Dickens frequently came to see them, and "Mr. Micawber," with his ample seals and air of importance, made a great impression on the people of the village. Dickens freely entered into the social life of Exeter, and he was a regular visitor on these occasions at the old "Turk's Head Inn," adjoining the Guildhall, where it was said he picked up the ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... schooling, and his miserable time in the blacking factory, which form the basis of the early chapters of David Copperfield, are largely accounted for by the fact that his f. was to a considerable extent the prototype of the immortal Mr. Micawber; but partly by his being a delicate and sensitive child, unusually susceptible to suffering both in body and mind. He had, however, much time for reading, and had access to the older novelists, Fielding, Smollett, and others. A kindly relation also took him frequently to the ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin |
