Tale of Two Cities Quotes Speaker

"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"

Gabelle

"...he is denounced- and gravely- by the Citizen and Citizeness Defarge. And by one other...Do you ask Citizen Doctor?"

Guards

" '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!"

Jerry Cruncher

"So you put him in his coffin? Who took him out of it?"

Jerry Cruncher

"What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying again' me?"

Jerry Cruncher

"His fingers is always rusty. Where does he get all that iron rust from. He don't get no rust here (on our stool)."

Little Jerry Cruncher

"Oh, Father, I should so like to be a resurrection-man when I'm quite growed up!"

Little Jerry Cruncher

"Are you dying for him? Oh, you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?"

Little seamstress

"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."

Little seamstress

"'I am not thankless, I hope, but that dreadful woman seems to throw a shadow on me and on all my hopes.'"

Lucie

"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."

Lucie

"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."

A spectator

"... It is good until recalled. But it may be soon recalled, and, I have reason to think, will be."

Carton

"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

"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....."

Carton

"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."

Carton

"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

"...a face... I can look at... which looks at me with any deference on it but the dark deference of fear and slavery."

Darnay

"Dearest - Take courage. I am well, and you father has influence around me. You cannot answer this. Kiss our child for me."

Darnay

"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

"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."

Darnay

"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."

Darnay

"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. "

Doctor Manette

"Did you ask me for my name...105 North Tower."

Doctor Manette

"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."

Doctor Manette

"You must not be weak my darling," he remonstrated; "don't tremble so. I have saved him."

Doctor 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

"Then tell wind and fire where to stop... but don't tell me."

Madame Defarge

"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

"'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

"You shall not get the better of me. I am an Englishwoman!"

Miss Pross

"'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.'"

Monsieur Defarge

"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 Defarge

"The chateau and all the race. Extermination!"

Monsieur Defarge

"'Wait at Dover for Mam'selle.' It's not long, you see, guard. Jerry, say that my answer was, RECALLED TO LIFE"

Mr. Lorry

"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

"I'm a mere man of business, and unfit to cope with such intricate and difficult matters."

Mr. Lorry

"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."

Mr. Lorry

"" [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...""

Narrator

"...already fast shouldering his way to a large and lucrative practice..."

Narrator

"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"

Narrator

"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."

Narrator

"Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached to it was a knife...Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from..."

Narrator

"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"

Narrator

"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"

Narrator

"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."

Narrator

"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".

Narrator

"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."

Narrator

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness..."

Narrator

"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."

Narrator

"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."

Narrator

"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."

Stryver

"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."

Stryver

"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."

The Defarges

"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