A tale of two cities
Charles Dickens
Here a
classical across two of my loves, across the channel, England and France, and
couldn’t be better as to read that from a distant eye and describes what has
been ever since the French Syndrom. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death!
The story is concise, well known in advance, still the peek up to the details
give this particular savour I understand now from the feedbacks I’ve been told
on Charles Dickens.
My first
book of Charles Dickens, and what a book. To be true, wouldn’t have caught my
eyes if not for a rapid download over. I have no interest whatsoever in an
history of France that happened more than 2 hundred years ago, and that is
still getting echoed hundred of times a day on the French radio, paper, and so
on. Gosh, loosen up and move on.
Quotes:
-France,
less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the
shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper
money and spending it.
-the mob
fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody
thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way.
-My friend
is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is
the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in
that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life's end.
-A bottle
of good claret after dinner does a digger in the red coals no harm, otherwise
than as it has a tendency to throw him out of work.
-He didn't
call it a particularly curious coincidence; most coincidences were curious.
-He knew
enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the
faithful service of the heart;
-with a
jargon about "the Centre of Truth:" holding that Man had got out of
the Centre of Truth—which did not need much demonstration—but had not got out
of the Circumference, and that he was to be kept from flying out of the
Circumference, and was even to be shoved back into the Centre, by fasting and
seeing of spirits.
-With a
wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman abandonment of consideration not easy
to be understood in these days, the carriage dashed through streets and swept
round corners, with women screaming before it, and men clutching each other and
clutching children out of its way.
-"For
the love of Liberty;" which sounded in that place like an inappropriate
conclusion.
-Above all,
one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze
from the foundations of the world—the figure of the sharp female called La
Guillotine. It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for
headache, it infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, it imparted a
peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved
close: who kissed La Guillotine, looked through the little window and sneezed
into the sack.
-he was
virtually sentenced by the millions, and that units could avail him nothing.
-The hours
went on as he walked to and fro, and the clocks struck the numbers he would
never hear again. Nine gone for ever, ten gone for ever, eleven gone for ever,
twelve coming on to pass away.
