Tale of Two Cities Quotes Context
"But, now I believe that the mark of the red cross is fatal to them, and that they have no part in His mercies. And them and their descendants, to the last of their race, I, unhappy prisoner, do this last night of the year 1767, in my unbearable agony, denounce to the times when all these things shall be answered for. I denounce them to Heaven and to earth. "
Dr. Manette ends his letter he wrote in the Bastille that tells of the sins of the Evremonde family.
"Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached to it was a knife...Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from..."
Gaspard stabbed the Marquis and left this note. He killed the Marquis because he recklessly ran over and killed Gaspard's child.
"I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with....."
He is dying from the guillotine
"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."
He is dying from the guillotine
"It is madness. It cannot be accomplished, it can never be done, it has been attempted, and has always failed. I implore you not to add your death to the bitterness of mine."
He is speaking to Carton as Carton tries to take his place in the cell.
"Then tell wind and fire where to stop... but don't tell me."
In their wine shop, Mr. Defarge urges Mme. Defarge that perhaps she is being too violent when she says they must kill Miss Manette and little Lucie
"Except on the crown, which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, black hair, standing jaggedly all over it, and growing downhill almost to his broad, blunt nose. It was so like smith's work, so much more like the top of a strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best of players at leap-frog might have declined him, as the most dangerous man in the world to go over"
Jerry Cruncher just delivered a message to Mr. Lorry on Dover's Road while travelling up Shooter's Hill. He received Mr. Lorry's message back and began travelling back to Tellson's Bank.
"'Wait at Dover for Mam'selle.' It's not long, you see, guard. Jerry, say that my answer was, RECALLED TO LIFE"
Jerry just delivered a message from Tellson's Bank to Mr. Lorry on a cold, ominous night while Mr. Lorry travels up Shooter's Hill in Dover. He is headed to Paris on business and is walking alongside the carriage because the horses cannot pull them all up the hill. Mr. Lorry is traveling on the Dover road and gives the message to Jerry cruncher to give to someone at T. and Co.
"Oh, Father, I should so like to be a resurrection-man when I'm quite growed up!"
Little Jerry followed his father to work the previous night. He discovered what Jerry Cruncher's "occupation of the night" is.
"His face had become frozen, as it were , in a very curious look at Darney: an intent look, deepening into a frown of dislike and distrust, not even unmixed with fear. With this strange expression on him his thoughts had wandered away."
After Darnay has been acquitted at his first trial in England, everyone goes over to him and to Mr. Stryver in order to congratulate them on the acquittal. While doing this, Doctor Manette glimpses Darnay's face and freezes.
"It does not take a long time to strike a man with lightning," said..... "How long," demanded..., composedly, "does it take to make and store the lightning? Tell me." .... "It does not take a long time," said .... "for an earthquake to swallow a town. Eh well! Tell me how long it takes to prepare the earthquake?" ... "But when it is ready, it takes place, and grinds to pieces everything before it. In the meantime, it is always preparing, though it is not seen or heard. That is your consolation. Keep it."
After John Barsad, who was spying on the Defarges for the 2nd estate, exits the Defarge's wine-shop, the two Defarges discuss the coming revolution.
" 'Recalled to life.' That's a blazing strange message. Much of that wouldn't do for you, Jerry! I say, Jerry! You'd be in a blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to come into fashion, Jerry!"
After delivering the message "Wait at Dover for Ma'amselle" to Mr. Lorry on a cold night in Dover, Jerry takes Lorry's message, "Recalled to Life," back to Tellson's. He is on a horse.
"What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying again' me?"
At his home outside Tellson's in England, Jerry Cruncher notices his wife praying. This is in Book the Second, Chapter 1, five years after Lucie and Lorry found Doctor Manette alive in Saint Antoine.
"His fingers is always rusty. Where does he get all that iron rust from. He don't get no rust here (on our stool)."
At their home outside Tellson's in England, little Jerry sees his father.
"he'll be drawn on a hurdle to be half hanged, and then he'll be taken down and sliced before his own face, and then his inside will be taken out and burnt while he looks on, and then his head will be chopped off, and he'll be cut into quarters. That's the sentence."
Before Darnay's trial at Temple Bar, Jerry Cruncher asks a spectator (bluefly) what case is coming on. The spectator says that a treason case is coming, that the man will be found guilty, and that this will be the punishment.
"I don't care about fortune: she is a charming creature, and I have made up my mind to please myself: on the whole, I can afford to please myself...I feel Miss Manette will tell well in any station, and will always do me credit."
Carton and Stryver are drinking wine together while discussing cases at Temple Bar.
"Well! I'll say gallantry meaning is that I am a man who cares to be more agreeable, who takes more pains to be agreeable, who knows better how to be agreeable, in a women's society, than you do."
Carton and Stryver are drinking wine together while discussing cases at Temple Bar. Mr. Stryver just told Carton that he plans to marry Lucie.
"Are you dying for him? Oh, you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?"
Carton and the poor seamstress are in line at the guillotine.
"But for you, dear stranger, I should not be so composed, for I am naturally a poor little thing, faint of heart, nor should I have been able to raise my thoughts to Him who was put to death, that we might have hope and comfort here to-day. I think you were sent to me by Heaven."
Carton and the poor seamstress are in line to be killed by the guillotine.
"On the drunken occasion in question (one of a large number, as you know), I was insufferable about liking you, and not liking you. I wish you would forget it."
Carton comes to Darnay asking to come visit the children and Lucie whenever shortly after their honeymoon.
"... It is good until recalled. But it may be soon recalled, and, I have reason to think, will be."
Carton found the papers that will allow them to leave France in Doctor Manette's coat pocket. He discusses them with Lorry. Ultimately, Lorry is responsible for getting them out of France.
"By the help of heaven you shall! Promise me solemnly that nothing will influence you to alter the course on which we now stand pledged to on another."
Carton makes plans with Mr. Lorry for everyone (but him) to escape from Paris.
"Doctor Manette sat with his face turned away, and his eyes bent on the ground...he turned towards him in his chair, but did not look at him, or raise his eyes. His chin dropped upon his hand, and his white hair overshadowed his face."
Darnay approached Doctor Manette, professed his love for Lucie, asked for the Doctor's permission to marry her, and promised to reveal the secrets of his past on his wedding day.
"You must not be weak my darling," he remonstrated; "don't tremble so. I have saved him."
Darnay has just been acquitted from La Force and release to Lucie, but she still worries about his safety.
"I fear he is not to be reclaimed; there is scarcely a hope that anything in his character or fortunes is reparable now. But, I am sure he is capable of good things, gentle things, even magnanimous things."
Darnay has just belittled Carton at the dinner table and afterwards Lucie stands up for him
"For the love of Heaven, of justice, of generosity, of the honour of your noble name, I supplicate you, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, to succor and release me"
Darnay is reading a letter from Gabelle. The letter was sent because Gabelle has been evading the angry peasants who accused him of stealing their money and taxing them. They recently captured and imprisoned him. Unless Darnay saves him, he will be executed.
"'nothing for you. My duty is to my country and the People. I am the sworn servant of both, against you. I will do nothing for you.'"
Darnay just entered France, was arrested, and was assigned to the prison La Force. Defarge comes to question Darnay, and Darnay asks Defarge to contact Mr. Lorry of Tellson's Bank.
"...he is denounced- and gravely- by the Citizen and Citizeness Defarge. And by one other...Do you ask Citizen Doctor?"
Darnay just got released because of Doctor Manette's influence, but Lucie has still been on edge because she worries for her husband's safety/freedom. Suddenly, guards arrive at their front door to re-arrest Darnay.
"But, he had oppressed no man, he had imprisoned no man; he was so far from having harshly exacted payment of his dues, that he had relinquished them of his own will, thrown himself on a world with no favour in it, won his own private place there, and earned his own bread"
Darnay just received Gabelle's letter from Mr. Lorry. It was addressed to the Marquis heretofore St. Evremonde, Charles Darnay.
"So you put him in his coffin? Who took him out of it?"
Darnay was just re-arrested. Carton is trying to blackmail Barsad into helping him save Darnay. One of his several points is that Barsad has been associated with the spy Roger Cly. However, Barsad dismisses this and says that he is dead.
"In wild dreamlike procession, embracing whom they met and pointing him out, they carried him on. Reddening the snowy streets with the prevailing Republican color, in winding and tramping through them and as they reddened them below the snow with a deeper dye".
Darnay was just released from the Conciergerie due to Doctor Manette's influence.
"Every stone if its inner wall was covered by inscriptions which had been carved by prisoners- dates, names, complaints, and prayers...Upon a corner in the angle of a wall, one prisoner, who seemed to have gone to execution, had cut, at his last work, three letters...it was suggested that the letters were not initials, but the complete word DIG."
Darnay, Doctor Manette, Mr. Lorry, and Lucie sit under a tree outside the Manettes' house on Soho Square. Chapter: "Hundreds of People"
"Dearest - Take courage. I am well, and you father has influence around me. You cannot answer this. Kiss our child for me."
Defarge gave Lorry a note from Darnay, who is imprisoned in La Force. Lucie Manette reads the letter aloud while Mr. Lorry, Defarge, Madame Defarge, and the Vengeance stand nearby.
"" [He] could swallow a great many things with ease, and was by some few sullen minds supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing France; but, his morning's chocolate could not so much get into [his throat] without the aid of four strong men...""
Dickens is mocking nobility when we are first introduced to Monsignor of the town in the holiest of holiest rooms where the drinks his hot chocolate.
"...a face... I can look at... which looks at me with any deference on it but the dark deference of fear and slavery."
Dinner discussions in the Evremonde household.
"I renounce it...If it ever becomes mine, it shall be put into some hands better qualified to free it slowly...from the weight that drags it down, so that the miserable people who cannot leave it and who have been wrung to the last point of endurance may, in another generation, suffer less...there is a curse on it, and on all this land."
Dinner discussions in the Evremonde household.
"I'm a mere man of business, and unfit to cope with such intricate and difficult matters."
Doctor Manette just snapped out of his 9-day shoemaking trance. Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross decided that Mr. Lorry should inform Doctor Manette that he was in this state of insanity for over a week.
"One of the first considerations which arose in the business mind of Mr. Lorry when business hours came round, was this - that he had no right to imperil Tellson's by sheltering the wife of an emigrant prisoner under the Bank roof. His own possessions, safety, life, he would have hazarded for Lucie and her child, without a moment's demur; but the great trust he held was not his own, and as to that business charge he was a strict man of business."
Doctor Manette, Lucie, and little Lucie have recently arrived at Tellson's Bank in Paris. They panickedly informed Lorry that Darnay is imprisoned at La Force.
"'I am not thankless, I hope, but that dreadful woman seems to throw a shadow on me and on all my hopes.'"
Madame Defarge has come over to Lucie's house with Mr. Lorry and Monsieur Defarge. Monsieur Defarge tells Lucie that Madame Defarge will protect her and little Lucie, but the evil woman actually knits both their names into a "hit list" of people for the revolutionaries to kill.
"The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party seemed to fall so threatening and dark on the child, that her mother instinctively kneeled on the ground beside her, and held her to her breast. The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party seemed then to fall, threatening and dark, on both mother and the child."
Madame Defarge has come over to Lucie's house with Mr. Lorry and Monsieur Defarge. Monsieur Defarge tells Lucie that Madame Defarge will protect her and little Lucie, but the evil woman actually knits both their names into a "hit list" of people for the revolutionaries to kill.
"You shall not get the better of me. I am an Englishwoman!"
Madame Defarge is at the Manette household because she wants to kill Lucie Manette.
"My husband, fellow-citizen, is a good Republican and a bold man; he had deserved well of the Republic, and possesses its confidence. But my husband has his weaknesses, and he is so weak as to relent towards this Doctor."
Madame Defarge is in her wine shop with the Vengeance and Jacques 3 before she goes out to Lucie's house to kill her
"They are sought by so many, and they are granted (comparatively) to so few! It used not to be so, but... in all such things is changed for the worse. Our not remote ancestors held the right of life and death over the surrounding vulgar."
Marquis and his nephew are having a discussion over dinner shortly after his nephew arrived.
"It was a heavy mass of building,... with a large stone courtyard before it, and two stone sweeps of staircase meeting in a stone terrace... a stony business altogether, with heavy stone balustrades, stone urns, and stone flowers, and stone faces of men, and stone heads of lions, in all directions."
Marquis arrives in his chateau after returning from the party in town and killing Gaspard's child
"'There never was, not will be, but one man worthy of Ladybird,' said ____; 'and that was my brother Solomon, if he hadn't made a mistake in life.'"
Miss Pross complains to Mr. Lorry about the hundreds of suitors visiting Lucie when he comes to visit.
"The chateau and all the race. Extermination!"
Monsieur Defarge and the Jacques vote on the Evremonde family's punishment. The mender of the roads who they don't yet trust waits outside the room.
"Be a brave man, my Gaspard: It is better for the poor little thing to die so, than to live in such times as these. It has died in a moment without pain. Could it have lived an hour as happily?"
Monsieur the Marquis just ran over Gaspard's child while he recklessly drives through the town of Saint Antoine. Gaspard sobs over the body of his young child.
"Did you ask me for my name...105 North Tower."
Mr. Lorry and Miss Manette arrive in France to retrieve Doctor Manette from the Defarge's wine shop in Saint Antoine, France.
"It is a lady's walking shoe. It is in the present mode. I never saw the mode. I have had a pattern in my head."
Mr. Lorry and Miss Manette arrive in France to retrieve Doctor Manette from the Defarge's wine shop in Saint Antoine, France.
"But he has been-been found. He is alive. Greatly changed, it is too probable; almost a wreck, it is possible; though we will hope the best. Still, alive. Your father has been taken to the house of an old servant in Paris, and we are going there: I, to identify him if I can: you, to restore him to life, love, duty, rest, comfort."
Mr. Lorry is meeting with Miss Manette at the Royal George Hotel in Dover.
"He was so deadly pale- which had not been the case when they went in together- that no vestige of colour was to be seen in his face"
Mr. Manette has just finished speaking to Charles Darnay on the morning of his wedding. Darnay has told him his true name and family.
"...already fast shouldering his way to a large and lucrative practice..."
Mr. Stryver and Mr. Carton are drinking together while reviewing information for their case in the chapter "the Jackal." Basically, Mr. Carton is bringing Mr. Stryver information, but Mr. Stryver gets all the credit. He does this and shoulders his way up the ladder of success.
"Bad Fortune!" "and here are the tumbrils! And Evremonde will be despatched in a wink, and she not here! See her knitting in my hand, and her empty chair ready for her. I cry with vexation and disappointment!"
The Vengeance screams for Madame Defarge (whom Miss Pross killed) because Carton (who she thinks is Darnay) is about to be killed; Madame Defarge has waited for over 20 years to see the Evremonde family exterminated
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness..."
This is the first sentence of the book
"Why, yes, of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your father, the gentleman was of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your father, the gentleman of repute in Paris. I had the honor of knowing him there. Our relations were business relations, but confidential. I was at that time in our French House, and had been-oh! Twenty years."
While meeting with Lucie Manette at the Royal George Hotel, Mr. Lorry prepares to tell her that her father is actually alive.
