“[T]he evil of it is that it is a world wrapped up in too much jeweller’s cotton and fine wool, and cannot hear the rushing of the larger worlds, and cannot see them as they circle round the sun. It is a deadened world, and its growth is sometimes unhealthy for want of air.”

Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Ch. 2

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "[T]he evil of it is that it is a world wrapped up in too much jeweller’s cotton and fine wool, and cannot hear the rush…" by Charles Dickens?
Charles Dickens photo
Charles Dickens 116
English writer and social critic and a Journalist 1812–1870

Related quotes

Robert Crumb photo
Bret Stephens photo

“[T]he United States is not “much of the world.””

Bret Stephens (1973) far-right American

We are a sovereign state, not a nation-state. Unlike, say, Denmark, we have no official language and no state religion. Our identity is oriented toward the future, not the past. We do have birthright citizenship — though that, curiously, is something many of today’s national conservatives want to abolish. Our national borders have changed repeatedly and may change again.</p><p>America is the country under whose banner the descendants of slaves give military orders to the descendants of slave owners and stand guard alongside the children of immigrants from Greece and Mexico in places like Panmunjom. It’s where the biological son of a Syrian immigrant created our first trillion-dollar company. It’s where Jews celebrate Christmas by going out for Chinese food.</p><p>All this is the essence of America’s exceptionalism. It does not require open borders, rule by U.N. mandarins, obeisance to progressive pieties or any of the other ostensible predations of “globalism” that conservative nationalism claims to oppose.</p>
The New Conservative Pyrite (2019)

Frank Herbert photo
V.S. Naipaul photo
Guy Gavriel Kay photo
Black Elk photo

“Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles, and everything tries to be round.”

Black Elk (1863–1950) Oglala Lakota leader

Source: Black Elk Speaks (1961), Ch. 17 : The First Cure
Context: Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. In the old days when we were a strong and happy people, all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation, and so long as the hoop was unbroken the people flourished.

Carlos Fuentes photo

“The North American world blinds us with its energy; we cannot see ourselves, we must see you.”

Carlos Fuentes (1928–2012) Mexican writer

"How I Started to Write", in Rick Simonson and Scott Walker (eds.) The Graywolf Annual Five: Multi-Cultural Literacy (St. Paul, Minn.: Graywolf Press, 1988); cited from Myself With Others (London: Pan, 1989) p. 5.

“The sun and the moon,
I want to see both worlds as One!”

The Sun and the Moon.
Brother, Sister (2006)

Related topics