Like a twisted olive tree in its 500th year, giving then its finest fruit, is man. How can he give forth wisdom until he has been crushed and turned in the Hand of God.
— Rabbi Akiva
Romantic Oliver Twist quotations
For the rest of his life, Oliver Twist remembers a single word of blessing spoken to him by another child because this word stood out so strikingly from the consistent discouragement around him.
Oliver Twist has asked for more!
One evening at Chequers the film was Oliver Twist.
Rufus, as usual, had the best seat in the house, on his master's lap. At the point when Bill Sikes was about to drown his dog to put the police off his track, Churchill covered Rufus's eyes with his hand. He said, "Don't look now, dear. I'll tell you about it afterwards."
For me Oliver Twist is a political novel.
It is a furious critique of the treatment of orphans and poor children who were forced to spend their early lives in ghastly institutions.
As soon as Oliver Twist is serialized, people who would never dream of reading [Charles] Dickens, if they hadn't seen him on their box, buy the paperback.
I auditioned for a community theater-slash-professional production of Oliver Twist in Union City when I was 11 because my cousin wanted to be an actor and I was visiting her and it seemed like fun. I was Oliver. I hadn't had any training, I was just a cute kid. There was an agent in the audience.
Can we reasonably expect happiness from an insatiable appetite which, no matter how it stuffs its belly, is still psychologically like Oliver Twist in the poorhouse, holding up an empty bowl and begging, "I want some more"? Isn't it possible that our dream of the good society contained, from the beginning, a hidden violation of the Tenth Commandment "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods"?
Mark Twain didn't psychoanalyze Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer.
Dickens didn't put Oliver Twist on the couch because he was hungry! Good copy comes out of people, Johnny, not out of a lot of explanatory medical terms.
Although many of his other novels are brilliant there is a power in 'Oliver Twist' that I believe Dickens never managed to retrieve. It is as if he was sent to this earth with the sole purpose of writing this book.
My first film crush was Mark Lester as Oliver Twist in the Carol Reed film.
According to Dickens, the first rule of human nature is self-preservation and when I forgive him for writing a character as pathetic as Oliver Twist, I'll thank him for the advice.