Great Expectations Quotes

The 8 most famous lines from Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (1861), each with its speaker and the scene it belongs to. These are the quotes readers underline, copy into essays and put on walls - gathered in one place, explained in a line.

• “My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip... I drew Pip as my conclusion.”

  - Pip. The opening paragraph.

• “I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”

  - Pip. On Estella.

• “Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be.”

  - Estella. In the novel's ending.

• “Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth.”

  - Narrator. Pip in the old battery.

• “Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence.”

  - Mr Jaggers. To Pip at their first meeting in London.

• “You must know... that I have no heart.”

  - Estella. Warning Pip what she is.

• “Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together.”

  - Joe Gargery. Explaining why he can stay only a moment.

• “I lived rough, that you should live smooth; I worked hard, that you should be above work.”

  - Abel Magwitch. Revealing what his money was for.

Why these lines survive

Charles Dickens’s sentences earn their fame by compression: each line carries the whole book’s argument in a form you can carry in your pocket. Read in order, the 8 quotes above also sketch the novel’s shape - the world it opens, the pressure it applies, the note it ends on. If you meet them before the book, nothing is spoiled beyond mood; if you meet them after, each one lands like a place you have been.

Quote collectors: pair this page with the Great Expectations quiz to see which lines actually stuck, the book club questions when you want to argue about them, or how long the reread takes - about 12 hours and 49 minutes at an average pace. If the lines did their job and you want more of the same nerve, the books like Great Expectations list is next.

Want the whole shelf’s lines? Our Charles Dickens books in order guide lists every book.

How to use a quotes page

Three honest uses. Before reading: skim the first two quotes to taste the prose - if the voice does not pull you, the book will not either. During: mark which quote you actually reach in the text, because the distance between famous line and lived scene is where a book keeps its secrets. After: pick the one quote you would defend at dinner and check it against the discussion questions - a quote you can argue about is a quote you understood. What a quotes page is not for is replacing the book; five lines of Charles Dickens are an invitation, not a summary.

More quote collections

Heart of Darkness quotes, The Time Machine quotes, A Tale of Two Cities quotes, The Hound of the Baskervilles quotes - or browse quotes from all 133 classics. Then see which of them stuck on the original book quiz.

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