A Tale of Two Cities

by Charles Dickens

There are some classics that you pick up and they just don’t do much for you. It doesn’t mean they’re not great or that they weren’t important for cultural reasons in the moment. It just means that you personally didn’t like it. D. H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” is that way for me, or at least it was when I read it 15 years ago. I just didn’t much care for it. 

“A Tale of Two Cities” is in no way that kind of book for me. I found it to be wonderful, and it has stuck with me still 20-some-odd years later. You don’t me to tell you that it’s a classic. The world also doesn’t need some long-winded essay about this Dickens’ masterpiece. I’ll spare you.

“Think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you.”

“A day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self.”

“There is prodigious strength in sorrow and despair.”

“A multitude of people and yet solitude.”

“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.”

“The cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him.”

“Death may beget life, but oppression can beget nothing other than itself.”

“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.”

“Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule.”

“Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; – the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!”

Sticky Books are those that you just can’t get out of your head. They stick with you long after you have put the book down and have moved on to something else. These are some of my Sticky Books. I don’t enjoy reviewing books myself. I find I am either full of far too much praise for the book because I know how difficult it can be to write a book, or I am far too negative about a book because, well, I guess I was just in a bad mood. So instead of reviews, I have pulled some of my favorite quotes from each Sticky Book.

Find more writing and publishing tips at Nothing Any Good.