— Great Expectations (1861), Chapter 8
About this quote
हिन्दी में
बच्चे जिस नन्ही-सी दुनिया में जीते हैं — उन्हें पालने वाला चाहे कोई भी हो — उसमें अन्याय जितनी बारीकी से पहचाना और जितनी गहराई से महसूस किया जाता है, उतना और कुछ नहीं।
What it means
The word doing the work is finely, and Dickens uses it twice — once for perceiving, once for feeling. That is a claim about accuracy, not merely sensitivity: a child detects unfairness precisely, the way a fine instrument registers a small quantity, and the feeling that follows is proportionate to a correct reading.
It is worth keeping because it reverses the standard adult verdict. Grown-ups treat a child’s protest as exaggeration to be calmed; this sentence says the child has measured something correctly, and that nothing else in that small world is measured half so well.
What it teaches you
When a child in your house says something is not fair, test the claim before you manage the tears — check who actually got what, and whether the rule you just applied to them is the rule you applied to the older child, the visiting cousin, or yourself. The sentence predicts the child’s reading of the facts will usually hold up, even when the volume of the protest suggests otherwise.
अर्थ और सीख
डिकेंस कह रहे हैं कि बच्चा अन्याय को सिर्फ़ तीव्रता से महसूस नहीं करता, बल्कि उसे बहुत बारीकी से पहचानता भी है — यानी उसकी पकड़ सही होती है। बड़ों की आदत होती है कि बच्चे की शिकायत को बढ़ा-चढ़ाकर कही गई बात मान लें। सीख यह कि ‘यह ठीक नहीं है’ सुनते ही चुप कराने के बजाय पहले तथ्य जाँचिए — किसे क्या मिला, और वही नियम बड़े बच्चे या ख़ुद आप पर लगा या नहीं।
Where it comes from
One of the most quietly devastating lines in Dickens, and almost always quoted in a shortened form that drops the clause about whoever brings children up. The full sentence is harder: it puts the adult in the frame, not just the injustice.
Pip is describing his own childhood. The observation is that a child’s world is small, so the injustices in it are correspondingly enormous — scale, not severity, is the point.
