Charles Dickens

“ Society suppresses us and dominates us—Bird, be quiet!’
The parrot had broken into a violent fit of laughter, after twisting divers bars of his cage with his crooked bill, and licking them with his black tongue.
‘It is quite unnecessary to say to a person of your good sense, wide range of experience, and cultivated feeling,’ said Mrs Merdle from her nest of crimson and gold—and there put up her glass to refresh her memory as to whom she was addressing,—‘that the stage sometimes has a fascination for young men of that class of character. ”

“ He is almost an idiot.’
‘I am so sorry—don’t be hurt—but, since you ask me what I have to say, I am so very sorry, Fanny, that you suffered this lady to give you anything.’
‘You little Fool!’ returned her sister, shaking her with the sharp pull she gave her arm. ‘Have you no spirit at all? But that’s just the way! You have no self-respect, you have no becoming pride. just as you allow yourself to be followed about by a contemptible little Chivery of a thing,’ with the scornfullest emphasis, ‘you would let your family be trodden on, and never turn.’
‘Don’t say that, dear Fanny. ”

“ I shouldn’t care,’ said the Daughter of the Father of the Marshalsea, ‘if the others were not so common. None of them have come down in the world as we have. They are all on their own level. Common.’
Little Dorrit mildly looked at the speaker, but did not interrupt her. Fanny took out her handkerchief, and rather angrily wiped her eyes. ‘I was not born where you were, you know, Amy, and perhaps that makes a difference. My dear child, when we get rid of Uncle, you shall know all about it. ”

“ Because I am a dancer!’
‘O Fanny!’
‘And Tip, too, poor fellow. She is to disparage him just as much as she likes, without any check—I suppose because he has been in the law, and the docks, and different things. Why, it was your doing, Amy. You might at least approve of his being defended.’
All this time the uncle was dolefully blowing his clarionet in the corner, sometimes taking it an inch or so from his mouth for a moment while he stopped to gaze at them, with a vague impression that somebody had said something. ”

“ To have painted the sordid facts of their lives, and they throughout invoking the death’s head apparition of the family gentility to come and scare their benefactors, would have made Young John a satirist of the first water. ”

“ Fanny set her lips, and her eyes looked half triumphantly at her sister.
‘A son of two or three-and-twenty. He is a little gay, a thing Society is accustomed to in young men, and he is very impressible. Perhaps he inherits that misfortune. I am very impressible myself, by nature. ”

“ Immediately after which, a sprightly gentleman with a quantity of long black hair looked round a beam on the right, and said, ‘Less noise there, darlings!’ and also disappeared.
Miss Dorrit and Little Dorrit
‘The notion of you among professionals, Amy, is really the last thing I could have conceived!’ said her sister. ‘Why, how did you ever get here?’
‘I don’t know. The lady who told you I was here, was so good as to bring me in.’
‘Like you quiet little things! You can make your way anywhere, I believe. ”