It was the best of times, it was the worst…
Quote
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.
The story behind this quote
This is how A Tale of Two Cities begins, in chapter I, “The Period”. More pairs of opposites follow, such as the spring of hope and the winter of despair, before the sentence turns ironic: the period was so like the present that its “noisiest authorities” insisted on its being described “in the superlative degree of comparison only”. The chapter then sets the scene in 1775, with a king “with a large jaw” on the thrones of both England and France.
Dickens is mocking every age that believes itself the best or the worst ever. The novel, set during the French Revolution, ends with Sydney Carton going to the guillotine in another man’s place: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done”.
Dickens published the novel in weekly instalments in 1859, in his new magazine All the Year Round, acknowledging in his preface a debt to Thomas Carlyle’s history of the French Revolution. The opening is now quoted to describe any age of contrasts.
The source
A Tale of Two Cities, Book the First, chapter 1 (opening sentence), 1859
Checked word for word in the work itself.
More quotes by Charles Dickens
Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.
Some persons hold that there is a wisdom of the Head, and that there is a wisdom of the Heart.
Never do to-morrow what you can do to-day. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for any one else.
Author
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was the most popular novelist of the Victorian era. Published in monthly instalments, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend combine social criticism with unforgettable characters.
Quotes by Charles Dickens