"Micawber" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bread. Too proud to become an additional charge to these two hard-working women, she helped the latter with her sewing and so contributed her share to the family means. It was not a congenial occupation. But to her any work was preferable to waiting, Micawber-like, for something better to turn up. Though she was happy because she was with her friend, her life here was wellnigh as tragic as it had been in her father's house. The family sorrows were great and many. Mr. Blood was a ne'er-do-weel and a drunkard. Caroline, one of the daughters, had then ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... responsible ministry. As it is, the representative branch of our government is practically a nullity. What with his immense patronage, the progress of events, and the chance of luring the opposing party into by-questions, the Presidential Micawber of the moment is almost sure that something will turn up to extricate him from the consequences of his own incompetency or dishonesty. The only check upon this system is the chance that the temerity engendered by irresponsible power may lead the executive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... walking the streets, where, as a child, he had picked up the most valuable part of his education. His tramps about London—often after {269} nightfall—sometimes extended to fifteen miles in a day. He knew, too, the shifts of poverty. His father—some traits of whom are preserved in Mr. Micawber—was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea prison, where his wife took lodging with him, while Charles, then a boy of ten, was employed at six shillings a week to cover blacking-pots in Warner's blacking warehouse. The hardships and loneliness of this part ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... and waits for a nibble of the drowsy sucker that sleeps on his oozy bed, oblivious of the baitless hook from which he has long since stolen the worm. There he sits, and fishes, and fishes, and fishes, and like Micawber, waits for something to "turn-up." But nothing turns up until the shadows of evening fall and warn the truant home, where he is welcomed with a dogwood sprout. Then "sump'n" does turn up. He obeys the call of the Sunday school bell, and goes with solemn face, but ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... in a sense that the holders of high office never can be. Dickens could only write of natural people, so he wrote of common men: 'You will find him adrift as an impecunious commercial traveller like Micawber; you will find him but one of a batch of silly clerks like Swiveller; you will find him as an unsuccessful actor like Crumples; you will find him as an unsuccessful doctor like Sawyer; you will always find the rich and reeking ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
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