It’s a weakness to be so affectionate, but I can’t help it. No doubt my health would be much better if it was otherwise, still I wouldn’t change my disposition if I could. It’s the cause of much suffering, but it’s a consolation to know I possess it, when I wake up in the night.
Carton left him there; but lingered after a little distance, and turned back to the gate again when it was shut, and touched it. He had heard of her going to the prison every day. ‘She came out here,’ he said, looking about him, ’turned this way, must have trod on these stones often. Let me follow in her footsteps.
It is nothing to say that he hadn’t a word to throw at a dog. He couldn’t have thrown a word at a mad dog. He might have offered him one gently, or half a one, or a fragment of one; for he spoke as slowly as he walked; but he wouldn’t have been rude to him, and he couldn’t have been quick with him, for any earthly consideration.
Sixpennorth of halfpence?
Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards.
Many a time of an evening, when I sat alone looking at the fire, I thought, after all, there was no fire like the forge fire and the kitchen fire at home.
It was the Dover road that lay, on a Friday night late in November, before the first of the persons with whom this history has business.
Of repentance or remorse or any feeling of mine, I say not a word. If I were not dumb, you would be deaf. Let that go by. It is not for your ears.
Everything in our lives, whether of good or evil, affects us most by contrast.
Oliver complied; marvelling where the people could be found to read such a great number of books as seemed to be written to make the world wiser. Which is still a marvel to more experienced people than Oliver Twist, every day of their lives.
The sunset struck so brilliantly into the travelling carriage when it gained the hill-top, that its occupant was steeped in crimson.
The burst with which the carriage started out of the village and up the rise beyond, was soon checked by the steepness of the hill. Gradually, it subsided to a foot pace, swinging and lumbering upward among the many sweet scents of a summer night.
The night was so very sultry, that although they sat with doors and windows open, they were overpowered by heat. When the tea-table was done with, they all moved to one of the windows, and looked out into the heavy twilight. Lucie sat by her father; Darnay sat beside her; Carton leaned against a window. The curtains were long and white, and some of the thunder-gusts that whirled into the corner, caught them up to the ceiling, and waved them like spectral wings.
I knew it to be Joe’s file, and I knew that he knew my convict, the moment I saw the instrument.
Besides, the children of the poor know but few pleasures. Even the cheap delights of childhood must be bought and paid for.
A person is never known till a person is proved.
He was a mere child in the world, but he didn’t cry for the moon.
Night after night, the waves are hoarse with repetition of their mystery; the dust lies piled upon the shore; the sea-birds soar and hover; the winds and clouds are on their trackless flight; the white arms beckon, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far away.
Why should I regret my incapacity for details and worldly affairs, when it leads to such pleasant consequences.
I have sometimes sat alone here of an evening, listening, until I have made the echoes out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by and by into our lives.