Great Expectations Integrity and Reputation Quotes

I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 6. Pip regrets not owning up to his actions in helping runaway convict Magwitch with food and a file he stole from the Gargerys. The themes of integrity, guilt and deception are highlighted here as the older Pip in hindsight recognizes his own moral failings when he was a boy. Young Pip is walking back to the forge with Joe and Mr. Wopsle at the time and agonizes over whether to confess the truth to Joe. However, he decides to conceal his role in the convict’s escape from Joe. Pip’s adult self as the narrator looks back on the incident and sees his silence as cowardice. To the young Pip protecting his reputation was more important than integrity.

“There’s one thing you may be sure of, Pip,” said Joe, after some rumination, “namely, that lies is lies. Howsever they come, they didn’t ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, and work round to the same. Don’t you tell no more of ’em, Pip. That ain’t the way to get out of being common, old chap.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 9. After Pip admits to making up stories about what went on at Miss Havisham’s, the upright and honest Joe rebukes him. Pip lied about his visit there with sensational stories because Estella had told him he was common. But Joe, a highly principled man of integrity, warns Pip that lying is not the way to elevate your social status. In a world where many people follow the path of social pretensions and dishonesty, Joe offers Pip a moral compass to guide his life by. A father figure to Pip, he is anxious that Pip lives by a code of honesty and integrity.

My young mind was in that disturbed and unthankful state, that I thought long after I laid me down, how common Estella would consider Joe, a mere blacksmith; how thick his boots, and how coarse his hands. I thought how Joe and my sister were then sitting in the kitchen, and how I had come up to bed from the kitchen, and how Miss Havisham and Estella never sat in a kitchen, but were far above the level of such common doings.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 9. After Pip’s first visit to Satis House, he is worried about how Miss Havisham and Estella would view the man who has been an important father figure throughout his childhood. Rejecting Joe’s advice to be true to himself and his class, Pip becomes obsessed with social position and pleasing the upper class Havishams. His visit to their mansion has prompted him to see his own family’s way of life in a different and negative way. Estella and her criticisms of Pip being common have triggered in him an obsession with the importance of reputation and appearance over integrity and honesty. This change will follow him into adulthood.

Biddy was never insulting, or capricious, or Biddy to-day and somebody else to-morrow; she would have derived only pain, and no pleasure, from giving me pain; she would far rather have wounded her own breast than mine. How could it be, then, that I did not like her much the better of the two?

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 17. Here Pip acknowledges his friend Biddy to be a person of goodness and integrity, who is kind and selfless and compassionate and cares for him. Yet despite all her virtues, Pip wonders why he doesn’t love her more than Estella. The unpretentious Biddy serves as a foil to the superficial and cruel Estella. Pip’s internal conflict highlights his flawed perspective. He is blinded by Estella’s beauty and social status which seem more important to him than Biddy’s kindness and goodness.

“Pip is that hearty welcome,” said Joe, “to go free with his services, to honour and fortun’, as no words can tell him. But if you think as Money can make compensation to me for the loss of the little child – what come to the forge – and ever the best of friends!”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 18. An offended Joe gives this response to Jaggers’s offer of compensation for the loss of Pip in leaving the forge to train as a gentleman. Jaggers seems to think that everyone can be bought and has their price. But not so the highly principled Joe. Joe shows his strong moral integrity and unswerving loyalty and love for Pip, as he rejects the money offer. To Joe, money cannot compensate for the loss of his “little child” and his “best of friends.” Yet never one to stand in the way of the young brother-in-law he raised and cared for as a boy, he wishes Pip well in his new good fortune.

“O! there are many kinds of pride,” said Biddy, looking full at me and shaking her head; “Pride is not all of one kind…He may be too proud to let any one take him out of a place that he is competent to fill, and fills well and with respect.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 19. Biddy argues with Pip about the value of Joe’s role as a blacksmith and gives him a lesson in the meaning of pride. This is after Pip complains about Joe being backward in learning and manners, condescendingly offering to remove him into “a higher sphere” when he fully acquires his fortune. Biddy is defending Joe’s integrity and his steadfast pride in who he is and the career he has followed. By implication she is criticizing Pip for a different kind of pride in which he judges a person’s value by their wealth and social status.

Herbert Pocket had a frank and easy way with him that was very taking. I had never seen any one then, and I have never seen any one since, who more strongly expressed to me, in every look and tone, a natural incapacity to do anything secret and mean.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 22. Herbert Pocket who is now Pip’s London roommate turns out to be a true friend, much like Joe. He is described here by Pip as an open, honest and uncomplicated character. When Pip first comes to London Herbert extends the hand of friendship to him and also offers his support for Magwitch. Herbert is a man of integrity.

“It is a principle of his that no man who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true gentleman in manner. He says, no varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 22. Pip’s friend Herbert Pocket explains to him about Miss Havisham’s disastrous relationship with Compeyson, quoting his father Matthew Pocket about the conman. Truly good actions come from a good heart and Compeyson did not have a true manner or heart, he says. His father’s metaphor about varnish being unable to hide the grain of the wood is telling us that a person’s true nature cannot be faked.

“I am what you have made me. Take all the praise, take all the blame; take all the success, take all the failure; in short, take me.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 38. Estella gives this blunt response to Miss Havisham when she complains about how cold and unloving her adopted daughter is towards her. The quote highlights the destructive influence the manipulative Miss Havisham has had on Estella’s life. Estella’s ice cold character and reputation result from the way she was brought up by Miss Havisham. She turned her daughter into a heartless person who can neither love nor care, instilling coldness and cruelty into her.

I was so struck by the horror of this idea, which had weighed upon me from the first, and the working out of which would make me regard myself, in some sort, as his murderer, that I could not rest in my chair, but began pacing to and fro. I said to Herbert, meanwhile, that even if Provis were recognized and taken, in spite of himself, I should be wretched as the cause, however innocently.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 41. Pip shows some sense of integrity when he expresses concern that abandoning Magwitch at this point could result in his capture and execution. He has decided to stop accepting Magwitch’s money, but worries that rejection might drive Magwitch to despair and letting himself be arrested. Magwitch’s capture during the visit to Pip in London would make him his metaphorical “murderer,” Pip feels. So he and Herbert discuss a plan to take Magwitch out of the country.

I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction – whether it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know – in not having profited by his generosity since his revelation of himself.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 47. This quote reflects Pip’s internal moral conflict about taking money from a convict, having learned that Magwitch is his benefactor. Planning to help Magwitch escape from England, Pip decides that he can no longer profit from Magwitch’s generosity. Once Magwitch is safely out of London and abroad, Pip will end their relationship. The theme of integrity is found here, as Pip prioritizes his principles over exploiting Magwitch’s kindness for personal gain.

“Put the case that the child grew up, and was married for money. That the mother was still living. That the father was still living. That the mother and father, unknown to one another, were dwelling within so many miles, furlongs, yards if you like, of one another. That the secret was still a secret, except that you had got wind of it. Put that last case to yourself very carefully…For whose sake would you reveal the secret? For the father’s? I think he would not be much the better for the mother. For the mother’s? I think if she had done such a deed she would be safer where she was. For the daughter’s? I think it would hardly serve her to establish her parentage for the information of her husband, and to drag her back to disgrace, after an escape of twenty years, pretty secure to last for life.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 51. Speaking hypothetically in lawyerly language, Mr. Jaggers is actually referring to the parentage of Estella, who as a child was adopted by the wealthy Miss Havisham. Revealing the secret of who her parents are would benefit no one, he tells Pip. Rather it would only bring harm and disgrace to parents and daughter, tarnishing reputations. While Jaggers doesn’t mention them by name, Estella’s mother is Molly, who was tried for murder, and her father is the convict Magwitch. Estella’s parentage is a good example of situational irony.

The death close before me was terrible, but far more terrible than death was the dread of being misremembered after death. And so quick were my thoughts, that I saw myself despised by unborn generations, – Estella’s children, and their children.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 53. When Orlick ambushes Pip on the marshes in order to murder him, Pip worries more about how he will be remembered afterwards than he does about dying. Among his concerns are that Estella’s father Magwitch will believe he has deserted him, Herbert will doubt him and Joe and Biddy will never know how sorry he was for the way he treated them.

The wonderful difference between the servile manner in which he had offered his hand in my new prosperity, saying, “May I?” and the ostentatious clemency with which he had just now exhibited the same fat five fingers.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 58. When Pip returns to his home village after his fall from fortune he finds that his reputation among the villagers has suffered a reversal. People like Pumblechook no longer fawn over him like they did when Pip was a wealthy man. Instead Pumblechook puts on a show of pity and disdain when he offers Pip a handshake. By contrast back in Chapter 19 Pumblechook breathlessly ran after Pip to congratulate him and ask permission to repeatedly shake his hand: “‘May I?’ We shook hands for the hundredth time at least, and he ordered a young carter out of my way with the greatest indignation. Then, he blessed me and stood waving his hand to me until I had passed the crook in the road.”

“Dear Biddy,” said I, “you have the best husband in the whole world, and if you could have seen him by my bed you would have – But no, you couldn’t love him better than you do…And, dear Joe, you have the best wife in the whole world, and she will make you as happy as even you deserve to be, you dear, good, noble Joe!”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 58. When Pip visits his home village with the intention of proposing to Biddy and working with Joe, he ironically walks in on them on their wedding day. Instead of showing anger or resentment, he responds with generosity, congratulating and speaking in high praise of them. He tells them that they make the perfect loving partners for each other. In referring to the “good, noble Joe,” Pip recognizes the inherent goodness and integrity in the man who has been his true friend. This shows how much Pip has developed as a character and how he has grown in maturity, since the days he felt superior to his two truest friends.

“And Joe and Biddy both, as you have been to church to-day, and are in charity and love with all mankind, receive my humble thanks for all you have done for me, and all I have so ill repaid!”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 58. Pip’s shame and regret over his treatment of Joe and Biddy is expressed in this speech. He regrets the ingratitude he has shown in response to their love and kindness. A more humble Pip finally sees the error of his ways when he lived a life built on superficial values and forgot who his true friends were. Pip’s apology for the way he treated them shows an awakening of a sense of integrity on his self-improvement journey.
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