Perhaps second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that caring for others is sometimes not as genuine or deeply felt when it's second-hand, similar to wearing used clothes.
In this quote, Charles Dickens highlights the nature of relationships and emotional investments. He implies that caring for someone in a superficial or distant way—like wearing hand-me-down clothes—can seem easy and transient. In contrast, true caring requires a deeper, more genuine connection that is not easily cast aside. The metaphor of second-hand items suggests that such cares lack the authenticity and personal attachment found in genuine relationships.
In practice
During a speech about the importance of genuine connections in our lives.
I recollected one story there was in the village, how that on a certain night in the year (it might be that very night for anything I knew), all the dead people came out of the ground and sat at the heads of their own graves till morning.
A silent look of affection and regard when all other eyes are turned coldly away-the consciousness that we possess the sympathy and affection of one being when all others have deserted us-is a hold, a stay, a comfort, in the deepest affliction, which no wealth could purchase, or power bestow.
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.
There are not a few among the disciples of charity who require, in their vocation, scarcely less excitement than the votaries of pleasure in theirs.
You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer,” said Miss Pross, in her breathing. “Nevertheless, you shall not get the better of me. I am an Englishwoman.
Christmas is a poor excuse every 25th of December to pick a man's pockets.
I am an American citizen and feel I am entitled to the same rights as any other citizen.
The elephant, not only the largest but the most intelligent of animals, provides us with an excellent example. It is faithful and tenderly loving to the female of its choice, mating only every third year and then for no more than five days, and so secretly as never to be seen, until, on the sixth day, it appears and goes at once to wash its whole body in the river, unwilling to return to the herd until thus purified. Such good and modest habits are an example to husband and wife.
Help one another is part of the religion of our sisterhood.
Every wife who slaves to keep herself pretty, to cook her husband's favourite meals, to build up his pride and confidence in himself at the expense of his sense of reality, to be his closest and effectively his only friend, to encourage him to rejectthe consensus of opinionand find reassurance only in her arms is binding her mate to her with hoops of steel that will strangle them both.
The commitment had disappeared, and although he still watched the imagined glory of stealing, she could see now he was not believing. He was trying to believe it, and that’s never a good sign.
The moment someone asks you to do something you don't have the time or inclination to do is fraught with vulnerability.
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