A Tale of Two Cities Quotes
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Source: A Tale of Two Cities
Author: Charles Dickens
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Context
These are the opening lines of Charles Dickens' super famous French Revolution novel, A Tale of Two Cities. It sets the stage for the highs and lows paralleled in the story to come—and boy, he wasn't kidding.
P.S. That quote above? All one sentence. Yeah, only someone like Dickens could pull that off.
Where you've heard it
Hoo boy, where do we start?
This is one of those phrases that you hear just about everywhere—especially when people want to describe a period of time in which they went through both positive and negative experiences. Or when they just want to sound pompous while pontificating.
And just to prove it's not only literature-minded people who use it, check out this article's headline in the Journal of the Medical Library Association. (Okay fine, it's a little bit related to literature. You caught us.)
Here are a few other places you might see Dickens' timeless words:
Pretentious Factor
If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back? Here it is, on a scale of 1-10.
It might be tough to naturally work it into conversation, but you'll definitely sound well read—and, yeah, pretentious—if you do.