Nicholas Nickleby

by

Charles Dickens

Nicholas Character Analysis

Nicholas is Kate’s brother, Mrs. Nickleby and Nicholas Sr.’s son, and Ralph’s nephew. Nicholas is the novel’s protagonist. He is portrayed as kindhearted, honest, and compassionate. He almost always puts the needs of others ahead of his own. That is especially true when it comes to his family. Nicholas considers how each life decision will impact Kate and Mrs. Nickleby and consistently prioritizes their wellbeing over his own. Nicholas’s consideration for his family is one of the primary characteristics that differentiates him from his uncle, enemy, and foil, Ralph. While Ralph is technically a member of the Nickleby family, he does not care at all about Nicholas or Mrs. Nickleby. For example, he sends Nicholas to Dotheboys Hall because he knows that Nicholas will be miserable. Nicholas’s loyalty to his family extends to his friendships. While Ralph makes enemies out of almost everyone he meets, Nicholas finds friends in equal measure. In the end, Nicholas triumphs over Ralph with help from those friends, illustrating the novel’s insistence that collective power can defeat the corrosive, individualistic power wielded by Ralph, and that loyalty toward one’s family is an essential building block in a cooperative and well-functioning society. At the end of the novel, Nicholas marries Madeline. It’s also revealed that Nicholas’s friend, Smike, is his cousin (because Smike is Ralph’s biological son).

Nicholas Quotes in Nicholas Nickleby

The Nicholas Nickleby quotes below are all either spoken by Nicholas or refer to Nicholas. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Greed and Selfishness Theme Icon
).
Chapter 3 Quotes

'The doctors could attribute it to no particular disease,' said Mrs. Nickleby; shedding tears. 'We have too much reason to fear that he died of a broken heart.'

'Pooh!' said Ralph, 'there's no such thing. I can understand a man's dying of a broken neck, or suffering from a broken arm, or a broken head, or a broken leg, or a broken nose; but a broken heart!—nonsense, it's the cant of the day. If a man can't pay his debts, he dies of a broken heart, and his widow's a martyr.'

'Some people, I believe, have no hearts to break,' observed Nicholas, quietly.

Related Characters: Nicholas (speaker), Ralph (speaker), Mrs. Nickleby (speaker), Nicholas Sr.
Page Number: 36
Explanation and Analysis:

The face of the old man was stern, hard-featured, and forbidding; that of the young one, open, handsome, and ingenuous. The old man's eye was keen with the twinklings of avarice and cunning; the young man's bright with the light of intelligence and spirit. His figure was somewhat slight, but manly and well formed; and, apart from all the grace of youth and comeliness, there was an emanation from the warm young heart in his look and bearing which kept the old man down.

However striking such a contrast as this may be to lookers-on, none ever feel it with half the keenness or acuteness of perfection with which it strikes to the very soul of him whose inferiority it marks. It galled Ralph to the heart's core, and he hated Nicholas from that hour.

Related Characters: Nicholas, Ralph
Page Number: 37
Explanation and Analysis:

The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.

Related Characters: Nicholas (speaker), Ralph, Kate, Mrs. Nickleby
Page Number: 41
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

My dear young Man.

I know the world. Your father did not, or he would not have done me a kindness when there was no hope of return. You do not, or you would not be bound on such a journey.

If ever you want a shelter in London (don't be angry at this, I once thought I never should), they know where I live, at the sign of the Crown, in Silver Street, Golden Square. It is at the corner of Silver Street and James Street, with a bar door both ways. You can come at night. Once, nobody was ashamed—never mind that. It's all over.

Related Characters: Newman (speaker), Nicholas, Ralph, Squeers , Nicholas Sr.
Page Number: 93
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

'May I—may I go with you?' asked Smike, timidly. 'I will be your faithful hard-working servant, I will, indeed. I want no clothes,' added the poor creature, drawing his rags together; 'these will do very well. I only want to be near you.'

'And you shall,' cried Nicholas. 'And the world shall deal by you as it does by me, till one or both of us shall quit it for a better. Come!'

Related Characters: Nicholas (speaker), Smike (speaker)
Page Number: 162
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

'He has a very nice face and style, really,' said Mrs. Kenwigs.

'He certainly has,' added Miss [Henrietta] Petowker. 'There's something in his appearance quite—dear, dear, what's that word again?'

'What word?' inquired Mr. Lillyvick.

'Why—dear me, how stupid I am,' replied Miss Petowker, hesitating. 'What do you call it, when Lords break off door-knockers and beat policemen, and play at coaches with other people's money, and all that sort of thing?'

'Aristocratic?' suggested the collector.

'Ah! aristocratic,' replied Miss Petowker; 'something very aristocratic about him, isn't there?'

Related Characters: Mr. Lillyvick (speaker), Henrietta (speaker), Mrs. Kenwigs (speaker), Nicholas
Page Number: 183-184
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

'The word which separates us,' said Nicholas, grasping him heartily by the shoulder, 'shall never be said by me, for you are my only comfort and stay. I would not lose you now, Smike, for all the world could give. The thought of you has upheld me through all I have endured today, and shall, through fifty times such trouble. Give me your hand. My heart is linked to yours. We will journey from this place together, before the week is out. What, if I am steeped in poverty? You lighten it, and we will be poor together.'

Related Characters: Nicholas (speaker), Smike
Page Number: 251
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22 Quotes

It was a harder day's journey than yesterday's, for there were long and weary hills to climb; and in journeys, as in life, it is a great deal easier to go down hill than up. However, they kept on, with unabated perseverance, and the hill has not yet lifted its face to heaven that perseverance will not gain the summit of at last.

Related Characters: Nicholas (speaker), Smike
Page Number: 269
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

'I hope you have preserved the unities, sir?' said Mr. Curdle […]

'Might I ask you,' said Nicholas, hesitating between the respect he ought to assume, and his love of the whimsical, 'might I ask you what the unities are?'

Mr. Curdle coughed and considered. 'The unities, sir,' he said, 'are a completeness—a kind of universal dovetailedness with regard to place and time—a sort of a general oneness, if I may be allowed to use so strong an expression. I take those to be the dramatic unities, so far as I have been enabled to bestow attention upon them, and I have read much upon the subject, and thought much. I find, running through the performances of this child,' said Mr. Curdle, turning to the phenomenon, 'a unity of feeling, a breadth, a light and shade, a warmth of colouring, a tone, a harmony, a glow, an artistical development of original conceptions, which I look for, in vain, among older performers.’

Related Characters: Nicholas (speaker), Mr. Curdle (speaker), Miss Snevellicci, Ninetta
Page Number: 301
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 35 Quotes

'When I talk of home,' pursued Nicholas, 'I talk of mine—which is yours of course. If it were defined by any particular four walls and a roof, God knows I should be sufficiently puzzled to say whereabouts it lay; but that is not what I mean. When I speak of home, I speak of the place where—in default of a better—those I love are gathered together; and if that place were a gypsy's tent, or a barn, I should call it by the same good name notwithstanding. And now, for what is my present home, which, however alarming your expectations may be, will neither terrify you by its extent nor its magnificence!'

Related Characters: Nicholas, Smike
Page Number: 423
Explanation and Analysis:

There was something so earnest and guileless in the way in which all this was said, and such a complete disregard of all conventional restraints and coldnesses, that Nicholas could not resist it. Among men who have any sound and sterling qualities, there is nothing so contagious as pure openness of heart. Nicholas took the infection instantly, and ran over the main points of his little history without reserve: merely suppressing names, and touching as lightly as possible upon his uncle's treatment of Kate. The old man listened with great attention, and when he had concluded, drew his arm eagerly through his own.

Related Characters: Nicholas, Ralph, Kate, Charles
Page Number: 430
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 42 Quotes

'If it's fated that listeners are never to hear any good of themselves,' said Mrs. Browdie, 'I can't help it, and I am very sorry for it. But I will say, Fanny, that times out of number I have spoken so kindly of you behind your back, that even you could have found no fault with what I said.'

Related Characters: Matilda (speaker), Nicholas, Squeers , John, Fanny
Page Number: 520
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 44 Quotes

There are some men who, living with the one object of enriching themselves, no matter by what means, and being perfectly conscious of the baseness and rascality of the means which they will use every day towards this end, affect nevertheless—even to themselves—a high tone of moral rectitude, and shake their heads and sigh over the depravity of the world. Some of the craftiest scoundrels that ever walked this earth, or rather—for walking implies, at least, an erect position and the bearing of a man—that ever crawled and crept through life by its dirtiest and narrowest ways, will gravely jot down in diaries the events of every day, and keep a regular debtor and creditor account with Heaven, which shall always show a floating balance in their own favour […]

Ralph Nickleby was not a man of this stamp. Stern, unyielding, dogged, and impenetrable, Ralph cared for nothing in life, or beyond it, save the gratification of two passions, avarice, the first and predominant appetite of his nature, and hatred, the second.

Related Characters: Nicholas, Ralph, Mulberry
Page Number: 536
Explanation and Analysis:

The only scriptural admonition that Ralph Nickleby heeded, in the letter, was 'know thyself.' He knew himself well, and choosing to imagine that all mankind were cast in the same mould, hated them; for, though no man hates himself, the coldest among us having too much self-love for that, yet most men unconsciously judge the world from themselves, and it will be very generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples.

Related Characters: Nicholas, Ralph, Mulberry
Page Number: 537
Explanation and Analysis:

'There is some spell about that boy,' said Ralph, grinding his teeth. 'Circumstances conspire to help him. Talk of fortune's favours! What is even money to such Devil's luck as this?'

Related Characters: Ralph (speaker), Nicholas, Mulberry
Page Number: 537
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 46 Quotes

The Rules are a certain liberty adjoining the prison, and comprising some dozen streets in which debtors who can raise money to pay large fees, from which their creditors do not derive any benefit, are permitted to reside by the wise provisions of the same enlightened laws which leave the debtor who can raise no money to starve in jail, without the food, clothing, lodging, or warmth, which are provided for felons convicted of the most atrocious crimes that can disgrace humanity. There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.

Related Characters: Nicholas, Madeline, Charles, Mr. Bray
Page Number: 570-571
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 52 Quotes

'Hope to the last!' said Newman, clapping him on the back. 'Always hope; that's a dear boy. Never leave off hoping; it don't answer. Do you mind me, Nick? It don't answer. Don't leave a stone unturned. It's always something, to know you've done the most you could. But, don't leave off hoping, or it's of no use doing anything. Hope, hope, to the last!'

Related Characters: Newman (speaker), Nicholas, Ralph, Madeline, Arthur
Page Number: 641
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 54 Quotes

'I must go upstairs for a few minutes, to finish dressing. When I come down, I'll bring Madeline with me. Do you know, I had a very strange dream last night, which I have not remembered till this instant. I dreamt that it was this morning, and you and I had been talking as we have been this minute; that I went upstairs, for the very purpose for which I am going now; and that as I stretched out my hand to take Madeline's, and lead her down, the floor sunk with me, and after falling from such an indescribable and tremendous height as the imagination scarcely conceives, except in dreams, I alighted in a grave.'

'And you awoke, and found you were lying on your back, or with your head hanging over the bedside, or suffering some pain from indigestion?' said Ralph. 'Pshaw, Mr. Bray! Do as I do (you will have the opportunity, now that a constant round of pleasure and enjoyment opens upon you), and, occupying yourself a little more by day, have no time to think of what you dream by night.'

Related Characters: Ralph (speaker), Mr. Bray (speaker), Nicholas, Madeline, Arthur
Page Number: 671
Explanation and Analysis:
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Nicholas Quotes in Nicholas Nickleby

The Nicholas Nickleby quotes below are all either spoken by Nicholas or refer to Nicholas. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Greed and Selfishness Theme Icon
).
Chapter 3 Quotes

'The doctors could attribute it to no particular disease,' said Mrs. Nickleby; shedding tears. 'We have too much reason to fear that he died of a broken heart.'

'Pooh!' said Ralph, 'there's no such thing. I can understand a man's dying of a broken neck, or suffering from a broken arm, or a broken head, or a broken leg, or a broken nose; but a broken heart!—nonsense, it's the cant of the day. If a man can't pay his debts, he dies of a broken heart, and his widow's a martyr.'

'Some people, I believe, have no hearts to break,' observed Nicholas, quietly.

Related Characters: Nicholas (speaker), Ralph (speaker), Mrs. Nickleby (speaker), Nicholas Sr.
Page Number: 36
Explanation and Analysis:

The face of the old man was stern, hard-featured, and forbidding; that of the young one, open, handsome, and ingenuous. The old man's eye was keen with the twinklings of avarice and cunning; the young man's bright with the light of intelligence and spirit. His figure was somewhat slight, but manly and well formed; and, apart from all the grace of youth and comeliness, there was an emanation from the warm young heart in his look and bearing which kept the old man down.

However striking such a contrast as this may be to lookers-on, none ever feel it with half the keenness or acuteness of perfection with which it strikes to the very soul of him whose inferiority it marks. It galled Ralph to the heart's core, and he hated Nicholas from that hour.

Related Characters: Nicholas, Ralph
Page Number: 37
Explanation and Analysis:

The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.

Related Characters: Nicholas (speaker), Ralph, Kate, Mrs. Nickleby
Page Number: 41
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

My dear young Man.

I know the world. Your father did not, or he would not have done me a kindness when there was no hope of return. You do not, or you would not be bound on such a journey.

If ever you want a shelter in London (don't be angry at this, I once thought I never should), they know where I live, at the sign of the Crown, in Silver Street, Golden Square. It is at the corner of Silver Street and James Street, with a bar door both ways. You can come at night. Once, nobody was ashamed—never mind that. It's all over.

Related Characters: Newman (speaker), Nicholas, Ralph, Squeers , Nicholas Sr.
Page Number: 93
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

'May I—may I go with you?' asked Smike, timidly. 'I will be your faithful hard-working servant, I will, indeed. I want no clothes,' added the poor creature, drawing his rags together; 'these will do very well. I only want to be near you.'

'And you shall,' cried Nicholas. 'And the world shall deal by you as it does by me, till one or both of us shall quit it for a better. Come!'

Related Characters: Nicholas (speaker), Smike (speaker)
Page Number: 162
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

'He has a very nice face and style, really,' said Mrs. Kenwigs.

'He certainly has,' added Miss [Henrietta] Petowker. 'There's something in his appearance quite—dear, dear, what's that word again?'

'What word?' inquired Mr. Lillyvick.

'Why—dear me, how stupid I am,' replied Miss Petowker, hesitating. 'What do you call it, when Lords break off door-knockers and beat policemen, and play at coaches with other people's money, and all that sort of thing?'

'Aristocratic?' suggested the collector.

'Ah! aristocratic,' replied Miss Petowker; 'something very aristocratic about him, isn't there?'

Related Characters: Mr. Lillyvick (speaker), Henrietta (speaker), Mrs. Kenwigs (speaker), Nicholas
Page Number: 183-184
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

'The word which separates us,' said Nicholas, grasping him heartily by the shoulder, 'shall never be said by me, for you are my only comfort and stay. I would not lose you now, Smike, for all the world could give. The thought of you has upheld me through all I have endured today, and shall, through fifty times such trouble. Give me your hand. My heart is linked to yours. We will journey from this place together, before the week is out. What, if I am steeped in poverty? You lighten it, and we will be poor together.'

Related Characters: Nicholas (speaker), Smike
Page Number: 251
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22 Quotes

It was a harder day's journey than yesterday's, for there were long and weary hills to climb; and in journeys, as in life, it is a great deal easier to go down hill than up. However, they kept on, with unabated perseverance, and the hill has not yet lifted its face to heaven that perseverance will not gain the summit of at last.

Related Characters: Nicholas (speaker), Smike
Page Number: 269
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

'I hope you have preserved the unities, sir?' said Mr. Curdle […]

'Might I ask you,' said Nicholas, hesitating between the respect he ought to assume, and his love of the whimsical, 'might I ask you what the unities are?'

Mr. Curdle coughed and considered. 'The unities, sir,' he said, 'are a completeness—a kind of universal dovetailedness with regard to place and time—a sort of a general oneness, if I may be allowed to use so strong an expression. I take those to be the dramatic unities, so far as I have been enabled to bestow attention upon them, and I have read much upon the subject, and thought much. I find, running through the performances of this child,' said Mr. Curdle, turning to the phenomenon, 'a unity of feeling, a breadth, a light and shade, a warmth of colouring, a tone, a harmony, a glow, an artistical development of original conceptions, which I look for, in vain, among older performers.’

Related Characters: Nicholas (speaker), Mr. Curdle (speaker), Miss Snevellicci, Ninetta
Page Number: 301
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 35 Quotes

'When I talk of home,' pursued Nicholas, 'I talk of mine—which is yours of course. If it were defined by any particular four walls and a roof, God knows I should be sufficiently puzzled to say whereabouts it lay; but that is not what I mean. When I speak of home, I speak of the place where—in default of a better—those I love are gathered together; and if that place were a gypsy's tent, or a barn, I should call it by the same good name notwithstanding. And now, for what is my present home, which, however alarming your expectations may be, will neither terrify you by its extent nor its magnificence!'

Related Characters: Nicholas, Smike
Page Number: 423
Explanation and Analysis:

There was something so earnest and guileless in the way in which all this was said, and such a complete disregard of all conventional restraints and coldnesses, that Nicholas could not resist it. Among men who have any sound and sterling qualities, there is nothing so contagious as pure openness of heart. Nicholas took the infection instantly, and ran over the main points of his little history without reserve: merely suppressing names, and touching as lightly as possible upon his uncle's treatment of Kate. The old man listened with great attention, and when he had concluded, drew his arm eagerly through his own.

Related Characters: Nicholas, Ralph, Kate, Charles
Page Number: 430
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 42 Quotes

'If it's fated that listeners are never to hear any good of themselves,' said Mrs. Browdie, 'I can't help it, and I am very sorry for it. But I will say, Fanny, that times out of number I have spoken so kindly of you behind your back, that even you could have found no fault with what I said.'

Related Characters: Matilda (speaker), Nicholas, Squeers , John, Fanny
Page Number: 520
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 44 Quotes

There are some men who, living with the one object of enriching themselves, no matter by what means, and being perfectly conscious of the baseness and rascality of the means which they will use every day towards this end, affect nevertheless—even to themselves—a high tone of moral rectitude, and shake their heads and sigh over the depravity of the world. Some of the craftiest scoundrels that ever walked this earth, or rather—for walking implies, at least, an erect position and the bearing of a man—that ever crawled and crept through life by its dirtiest and narrowest ways, will gravely jot down in diaries the events of every day, and keep a regular debtor and creditor account with Heaven, which shall always show a floating balance in their own favour […]

Ralph Nickleby was not a man of this stamp. Stern, unyielding, dogged, and impenetrable, Ralph cared for nothing in life, or beyond it, save the gratification of two passions, avarice, the first and predominant appetite of his nature, and hatred, the second.

Related Characters: Nicholas, Ralph, Mulberry
Page Number: 536
Explanation and Analysis:

The only scriptural admonition that Ralph Nickleby heeded, in the letter, was 'know thyself.' He knew himself well, and choosing to imagine that all mankind were cast in the same mould, hated them; for, though no man hates himself, the coldest among us having too much self-love for that, yet most men unconsciously judge the world from themselves, and it will be very generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature, and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant samples.

Related Characters: Nicholas, Ralph, Mulberry
Page Number: 537
Explanation and Analysis:

'There is some spell about that boy,' said Ralph, grinding his teeth. 'Circumstances conspire to help him. Talk of fortune's favours! What is even money to such Devil's luck as this?'

Related Characters: Ralph (speaker), Nicholas, Mulberry
Page Number: 537
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 46 Quotes

The Rules are a certain liberty adjoining the prison, and comprising some dozen streets in which debtors who can raise money to pay large fees, from which their creditors do not derive any benefit, are permitted to reside by the wise provisions of the same enlightened laws which leave the debtor who can raise no money to starve in jail, without the food, clothing, lodging, or warmth, which are provided for felons convicted of the most atrocious crimes that can disgrace humanity. There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.

Related Characters: Nicholas, Madeline, Charles, Mr. Bray
Page Number: 570-571
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 52 Quotes

'Hope to the last!' said Newman, clapping him on the back. 'Always hope; that's a dear boy. Never leave off hoping; it don't answer. Do you mind me, Nick? It don't answer. Don't leave a stone unturned. It's always something, to know you've done the most you could. But, don't leave off hoping, or it's of no use doing anything. Hope, hope, to the last!'

Related Characters: Newman (speaker), Nicholas, Ralph, Madeline, Arthur
Page Number: 641
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 54 Quotes

'I must go upstairs for a few minutes, to finish dressing. When I come down, I'll bring Madeline with me. Do you know, I had a very strange dream last night, which I have not remembered till this instant. I dreamt that it was this morning, and you and I had been talking as we have been this minute; that I went upstairs, for the very purpose for which I am going now; and that as I stretched out my hand to take Madeline's, and lead her down, the floor sunk with me, and after falling from such an indescribable and tremendous height as the imagination scarcely conceives, except in dreams, I alighted in a grave.'

'And you awoke, and found you were lying on your back, or with your head hanging over the bedside, or suffering some pain from indigestion?' said Ralph. 'Pshaw, Mr. Bray! Do as I do (you will have the opportunity, now that a constant round of pleasure and enjoyment opens upon you), and, occupying yourself a little more by day, have no time to think of what you dream by night.'

Related Characters: Ralph (speaker), Mr. Bray (speaker), Nicholas, Madeline, Arthur
Page Number: 671
Explanation and Analysis: