Quotes from Tale of Two Cities

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only” (Dickens 1).

“Keep where you are, because, if I should make a mistake, it could never be set right in your lifetime” (Dickens 7).

“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other” (Dickens 10).

“The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there” (Dickens 27).

“She had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night when I was summoned out—she had a fear of my going, though I had none—and when I was brought to the North Tower they found these upon my sleeve. ‘You will leave me them? They can never help me to escape in the body, though they may in the spirit.’ Those were the words I said, I remember them very well” (Dickens 42).

“But, there were other echoes, from a distance, that rumbled menacingly in the corner all through this space of time. And it was now, about little Lucie’s sixth birthday, that they began to have an awful sound, as of a great storm in France with a dreadful sea rising” (Dickens 202).

“The wives and mothers we have been used to see, since we were as little as this child, and much less, have not been greatly considered? We have known their husbands and fathers laid in prison and kept from them, often enough? All our lives, we have seen our sister-women suffer in themselves and in their children, poverty, nakedness, hunger, thirst, sickness, misery, oppression and neglect of all kinds” (Dickens 256).

“Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind” (Dickens 355).

“I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die” (Dickens 359).

“I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generation hence” (Dickens 359).

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known” (Dickens 360).

Quotes from Charles Dickens:

“A day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self” (Brainy Quote).

“Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts” (Brainy Quote).

“There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate” (Brainy Quote).

“No one is useless un this world who lightens the burdens of another” (Brainy Quote).

“Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do it well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself completely; in great aims and in small I have always thoroughly been in earnest” (Brainy Quote).