Quote Details: Charles Dickens: It was the best... - The Quotations Page Quotation #29595 from Classic Quotes : 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. Charles Dickens , A Tale of Two Cities English novelist (1812 - 1870) SparkNotes: A Tale of Two Cities: Important Quotations Explained Important Quotations Explained A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens Book the Third: The Track of a Storm Chapters 11–15 Key Facts 1.

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. . . . These famous lines, which open A Tale of Two Cities, hint at the novel’s central tension between love and family, on the one hand, and oppression and hatred, on the other. The passage makes marked use of anaphora, the repetition of a phrase at the beginning of consecutive clauses—for example, “it was the age . . . it was the age” and “it was the epoch . . . it was the epoch. . . .” This technique, along with the passage’s steady rhythm, suggests that good and evil, wisdom and folly, and light and darkness stand equally matched in their struggle.

The opposing pairs in this passage also initiate one of the novel’s most prominent motifs and structural figures—that of doubles, including London and Paris, Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay, Miss Pross and Madame Defarge, and Lucie and Madame Defarge. 2. A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imagin-ings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. The narrator makes this reflection at the beginning of Book the First, Chapter 3, after Jerry Cruncher delivers a cryptic message to Jarvis Lorry in the darkened mail coach.

Lorry’s mission—to recover the long-imprisoned Doctor Manette and “recall” him to life—establishes the essential dilemma that he and other characters face: namely, that human beings constitute perpetual mysteries to one another and always remain somewhat locked away, never fully reachable by outside minds. This fundamental inscrutability proves most evident in the case of Manette, whose private sufferings force him to relapse throughout the novel into bouts of cobbling, an occupation that he first took up in prison. Throughout the novel, Manette mentally returns to his prison, bound more by his own recollections than by any attempt of the other characters to “recall” him into the present. This passage’s reference to death also evokes the deep secret revealed in Carton’s self-sacrifice at the end of the novel. The exact profundity of his love and devotion for Lucie remains obscure until he commits to dying for her; the selflessness of his death leaves the reader to wonder at the ways in which he might have manifested this great love in life. 3. The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled.

It had stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and many wooden shoes. The hands of the man who sawed the wood, left red marks on the billets; and the forehead of the woman who nursed her baby, was stained with the stain of the old rag she wound about her head again. Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask, had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth; and one tall joker so besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a night-cap than in it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy wine-lees—blood. This passage, taken from Book the First, Chapter 5, describes the scramble after a wine cask breaks outside Defarge’s wine shop. This episode opens the novel’s examination of Paris and acts as a potent depiction of the peasants’ hunger. These oppressed individuals are not only physically starved—and thus willing to slurp wine from the city streets—but are also hungry for a new world order, for justice and freedom from misery. In this passage, Dickens foreshadows the lengths to which the peasants’ desperation will take them.

This scene is echoed later in the novel when the revolutionaries—now similarly smeared with red, but the red of blood—gather around the grindstone to sharpen their weapons. The emphasis here on the idea of staining, as well as the scrawling of the word blood, furthers this connection, as does the appearance of the wood-sawyer, who later scares Lucie with his mock guillotine in Book the Third, Chapter 5. Additionally, the image of the wine lapping against naked feet anticipates the final showdown between Miss Pross and Madame Defarge in Book the Third, Chapter 14: “The basin fell to the ground broken, and the water flowed to the feet of Madame Defarge. By strange stern ways, and through much staining of blood, those feet had come to meet that water.” 4. Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrels carry the day’s wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring and insatiate Monsters imagined since imagination could record itself, are fused in one realization, Guillotine.

And yet there is not in France, with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under conditions more certain than those that have produced this horror. Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind. In this concise and beautiful passage, which occurs in the final chapter of the novel, Dickens summarizes his ambivalent attitude toward the French Revolution. The author stops decidedly short of justifying the violence that the peasants use to overturn the social order, personifying “La Guillotine” as a sort of drunken lord who consumes human lives—“the day’s wine.” Nevertheless, Dickens shows a thorough understanding of how such violence and bloodlust can come about. The cruel aristocracy’s oppression of the poor “sow[s] the same seed of rapacious license” in the poor and compels them to persecute the aristocracy and other enemies of the revolution with equal brutality. Dickens perceives these revolutionaries as “[c]rush[ed] . .

. out of shape” and having been “hammer[ed] . . . into . . . tortured forms.” These depictions evidence his belief that the lower classes’ fundamental goodness has been perverted by the terrible conditions under which the aristocracy has forced them to live. 5. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out. . . . I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. . . . It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known.

Though much debate has arisen regarding the value and meaning of Sydney Carton’s sacrifice at the end of the novel, the surest key to interpretation rests in the thoughts contained in this passage, which the narrator attributes to Carton as he awaits his sacrificial death. This passage, which occurs in the final chapter, prophesies two resurrections: one personal, the other national. In a novel that seeks to examine the nature of revolution—the overturning of one way of life for another—the struggles of France and of Sydney Carton mirror each other. Here, Dickens articulates the outcome of those struggles: just as Paris will “ris[e] from [the] abyss” of the French Revolution’s chaotic and bloody violence, so too will Carton be reborn into glory after a virtually wasted life. In the prophecy that Paris will become “a beautiful city” and that Carton’s name will be “made illustrious,” the reader sees evidence of Dickens’s faith in the essential goodness of humankind. The very last thoughts attributed to Carton, in their poetic use of repetition, register this faith as a calm and soothing certainty.

More Help Charles Dickens wrote, 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...' Is that a time invariant statement? - Quora Quora Philosophy of Everyday Life Charles Dickens wrote, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." Is that a time invariant statement? Of course, In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens was speaking about London and Paris in the time before and during the French Revolution. The work covers 1775 to 1790. Indeed, those must have been turbulent years, and Dickens expertly shows us that while there are stark contrasts between the obvious blood lust of the crowds on the streets of Paris watching each successive weekend's beheadings, there are disturbing undertones of similarity as well. He notes the drunken crowd of ruffians who show up in London to jeer and taunt Charles Darnay at his aborted execution after his first trial. Wouldn't they welcome heads being rolled weekly and the occasionally miscreant being drawn and quartered? And how about now? Have we changed all that much? ISIS is doing the beheading. We in the US are far more civilized.

Here, an occasional RWNJ arms himself to the teeth and, mistaking Punjab for Pakistan (they sound so much alike) and Sikhs for Sunnis he, goes on a shooting rampage at a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin. In contrast, North Korea sentencer Baptist missionary to life in prison for trying to convert locals to Christianity. Is there ever a time when Dickens' opening line is not true? Written Sep 15, 2014 It's not enough to have a look at the events mentioned in the history and the ancient scriptures/mythology and make finite assessments and generalize something. It's really easy and convenient to hypothesize and speculate something when it happens repetitively. What about the events that took place years and years before any scripture was written and what about the events that are yet to happen many years from now? We really can't foretell this, can we? As User stated, it would be impossible to tell, if the statement will hold good after 50, 500, 5000 years. As for the statement mentioned in the double quotes, all I can say is that Charles Dickens has done a brilliant job with the use of Anaphora (a figure of speech).

Is it time invariant? I don't know. We are not proficient enough to determine this. Thank you James for asking this thought provoking question! 671 Views · View Upvotes · Answer requested by Written Sep 14, 2014 What Dickens describes is largely social discontent and the manner in which poverty battled back against economic inequality. The satisfaction a crowd would get from a beheading whether it was a king or queen or simply a miscreant was largely a release of that inner frustration of being dissatisfied with their own lot in life – a way of escape - a source of entertainment similar to the Romans and their gladiatorial spectacles. As long as it was not they who were under the axe, there was a morbid fascination with what they perceived as justice being served. Any underlying pleasure someone today might get from searching the net for a video of the current beheadings might equally relate to not only morbid curiosity but also to current social disharmony – a kind of vicarious way of placating one’s own social dissatisfaction.

ISIS is of course using beheadings as a political tool but the increasing degree of social inequality among certain countries around the world including the US might well result in similar forms of executions (mass shootings, bombings, militant uprisings) occurring more and more. Sectarian differences can be the spark that motivates but there are other causes as well. A crony capitalist society that favours only one segment of an increasingly impoverished population could quite easily stimulate the kinds of actions Dickens describes. Unfortunately humanity is slow to learn from the mistakes of the past. Individual greed trumps social harmony. 1.6k Views · View Upvotes · Answer requested by Updated Sep 21, 2014 That phrase is more "literary" than "time invariant" (which, as JSH well knows, is cribbed from science). The phrase resonates with deeper meaning. Maybe that wasn't as important as the way it looks on the page. As a writer, himself, I'm sure that the OP can appreciate the utility of a few well chosen words. (The details of the question, themselves, are nicely done, by the way. He needs to hurry up with his book.) The real thrust of this question is - are we"getting anywhere?".

Are we as savage as we ever were or are we catching on how civilized "advanced" societies should conduct themselves? PROGRESS Heres the thing. We live more comfortable and longer lives and are spared much of the physical toil of the 1800s. We have cures for some of the worst diseases including, even, "mistakes of nature" which are often corrected with modern medical procedures and under anesthesia. Since we are no longer "leashed to a plow", we can spend personal time in education, sports, and diverse entertaiments of our own choosings. The best of times, indeed. Are they also the worst of times? They can be. If you live in the wrong country, have an incurable disease, or, as Hollomon has pointed out, some creep feels he needs to saw through your neck to get back at you for embracing the wrong religion. Some would argue that - for all our "progress" - we've gone nowhere fast. I think that is pure contrariness. We still have a lot of work to do on ourselves but - me? I'm not moving to 19th century London. Not a chance!

Written Sep 15, 2014 The Age of Consequences “The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.” - Winston Churchill There are many contexts within todays time and there were many in the time that Dicken's words describe. So, one thing to think about is a scope for those words. Dicken's words were describing a particular place and time, Paris 1789 so if we narrow the scope today, clearly, we can find places in the world where it is the worst of times, Liberia comes to mind because, as I write this, they are experiencing nothing less than a plague and I don't think that Liberians will say it is also the "Best of times" and so the words are not invariant in the narrow scope of time and place. However, if we broaden the scope of those words to humanity in general, at least today I think Dicken's words do somewhat apply. Before I talk about why they apply today, we should look back to that time in Paris.

Things were bad, really bad in Paris most of the lower class's children and nearly all of their older people were dead from the effects of hunger, while the wealthy nobleman, the royals, and the church partied on. Twenty-somethings watched helplessly as their parents died and then their children. It was the best of times because it was the "Age of Reason", a revolution in knowledge and hope and America had a political revolution in which nobility was deposed; truly a revolution for that age. Today, it truly is the best of times for some fraction of the world's population while the majority are poor still living in grinding poverty. There is something else too, with the end of World War II, what I would call "The Age of Consequences" was born; The world is so populated that a mistake in logistics, an oil shock or something else causes famine that can profoundly effect not just millions, but hundreds of millions or billions of lives. Even worse, one screw up by a naval or Airforce officer and bang, no more world. The doomsday clock is just 5 minutes from midnight and Ukraine is a tripwire. One mistake, a torpedo or missile unleashed could end it all.

To make matters worse the world is warming and our fate may already be sealed 50 years hence. Yet, still the politicians in the U.S. ignore Churchill's fateful words and fail the entire world with inaction. Also today, science and technology march on, accelerating our knowledge of everything. Giving us hope that some scientific discovery might rescue us from ourselves. My son will see things that I cannot dream of, good and bad; if he lives. 216 Views · View Upvotes · Answer requested by Updated Apr 10, 2015 Humanity is only slowly, slowly emerging from the bloodlust. It is still very strong. The enhanced human abilities that I call 4C (communication, cogitation, cooperation, coaching) are significant in only a minority of the population. They are given lip service by the rest because there is grudging acceptance that the use of those 4C abilities is why we are not huddled in fetid caves afraid of predators. We have 'just wars'. We have executions by law. We have rampant violence in many forms. We have religious persecution by jihad. The Iraq war was as much religious, as it was about oil.

We have child-abuse for centuries, that gets covered up for centuries. Psychological testing repeatedly has revealed that 95% of human reactions are instinct based. We have rugby, and American football which are combat without edged, or explosive weapons. The slow, crawl out of the muddy, bloody animality that is our source can be accelerated. The masses of corporate, paid consultant, church, temple, ashram, counselor, therapist advice deal only with the habits that seem to be creating problems. They occasionally work, and support a vast industry of victim exploitation. They continue the travail. They do not eliminate it. The way to eliminate it is to focus on what is true for all, common to all, free for all, and functions as a method of liberation for all. Sweet sounding mouthings by unctuous holies will not end the horror. Only the awakening of enough members of all the peoples of the world to their individual, and collective potential can do that. It is not easy, is not immediate, and not for everyone. The path to awakening to what is possible also involves the discarding of habits that bind to animality.

We need to integrate our 4C abilities, with our instinct to live, not regard them as opposites, or different. We need to act in the reality that (1) each of us is unique, and an aspect of everything. We need to act within the reality that (2) causes produce effects, without fail. We need to have an acceptance, that can turn to celebration, that (3) lives change, yet Life goes on. Everyone knows all these concepts, and recognitions, yet they are easily forgotten in the heat of emotional reaction. The deliberate focus on those three inescapable, and so liberating realities, is required to unchain the brain. It is the path to free humanity from the painful confusion. My own experience with this struggle is only mine, yet is common to most, in differing degrees. I grew up with every excuse for dysfunctionality. I will not list them here. That dysfunctionality took me, after repeated failures, to the impending final failure of my life. All the card readers, fortune tellers, numerologists, readings into Zen,and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, escape into science fiction, motivational infomercial gurus, had not enabled me to rid myself of the increasing PTSD manifestations.

Then, the path to, not an answer, but to a way to dissolve the hatreds, resentments, memories of failures, pain beyond bearing, and free the human from the cage, bumped into me. It took me years to research the possible ways that this path toward self-directed victory could work. It is clear to me now that the learning of 1 to 3, and the simultaneous focus on them has the effect of changing the behavior pattern. This works both as information from a trusted source, and in a deeper way. The trusted source aspect comes from the desirable changes that occurred for me immediately after I began to investigate this method, by using it. The trust came because my immediate concerns for job, and income, were resolved by seeming coincidences very quickly. The originator of this method wrote that there are three kinds of proof. There is documentary proof, logical proof, and actual proof. A path to liberate oneself from repeated failure, and to build a life of value, and happiness is a serious matter. It should have long-term learned backing-called documentary proof. It should make sense, and it should produce desired results-called actual proof. The founder, Nichiren, insisted that actual proof is the most important. i certainly agreed.

Much of the change in the direction of life can be attributed to changes that occur because one has guidance from a trusted source that provides desirable behavior modification.l There is a deeper level of effect that has to do with neural plasticity. When we focus mind, eyes, speech, on the distilled expression of 1 to 3, with the addition of the respect, intention verb Nam, the neural pathways reconnect to ease the effect of negative views, and memories. This keeps going on so that the negative events that caused one to take up such a different approach, becomes interpreted as a blessing in disguise. The even deeper effect has to do with the reality of the individual being an aspect of everything, as well as a unique life. That concept is universal in all cultures, by different names. Yet, once it is fully opened to, life changes, and becomes freer, and the individual seems to be able to affect the environment to become supportive.

More detailed explanation of the method/path is given in It was the best of times, it was the worst of times | Define It was the best of times, it was the worst of times at Dictionary.com it was the best of times, it was the worst of times it was the best of times, it was the worst of times in Culture Expand It was the best of times, it was the worst of times definition The opening sentence of A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens , referring to the time of the French Revolution . The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

It Was The Best Of Times, It Was The Worst Of Times Expert Charts, Trading Tips and Technical Analysis from INO.com It Was The Best Of Times, It Was The Worst Of Times September 22, 2014 By Adam Hewison "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness..." Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens' well-known quote perfectly explains what's going on in the markets today. On one hand you have the bull encampment saying we're going to go higher and on the other hand you have the bears arguing that stocks are over-valued. So which is it? It is times like these that can drive investors crazy and frequently drives investors out of the market completely. I prefer to think of myself as a hybrid that is neither a bull nor bear, but someone who relies on the market to give them the answer to the trend. There is no question about it, after making a low in 2009 the market has been moving up and has put in a remarkable performance thanks largely to the Federal Reserve.

But here we are almost 5 1/2 years later and the question is, can we keep going higher? Always remember, nothing goes straight up or straight down. We have many stocks that are in a corrective mode and some that are in a downright bearish mode (see last Friday's post). If one simply looks at the indices themselves we can see that they are still in a long-term uptrend. And we can also see that many of these same indices are beginning to show negative divergences. That means prices are going higher, but are not being followed by momentum. This can be an early warning sign that a correction is coming. Today we are witnessing a sea of red as many stocks are coming under pressure as profit taking is coming into the market. Now investors sometimes act irrationally when they see pressure coming into a broad spectrum of stocks and want to sell just to get out of a position regardless of how good a company may be. This shakeout happens more often than the NYSE, the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ would have you believe.

In today's video, I will be looking at several markets and sharing with you what I believe is going on based on the Trade Triangles and other technical tools that I will be using to illustrate negative divergences. Every success with MarketClub, 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 is interesting how things come full circle during one's life. This process involves seeing things that one either missed or did not fully appreciate years ago. Therefore, in the sunset of one's life, one sees the light for more clearly. In addition, one is able to connect the dots as one looks back upon many decades. Finally, one is able to understand the dichotomy of life being filled with the good and bad times of life and the relationship between them. Over a half century ago, I had to memorize hundreds of lines of poetry or prose in my high school English classes . I hated that requirement as a teenager. Nonetheless, I have benefitted from remembering many of those lines and applied their wisdom during to my adult life. The poetry and prose that were committed to memory explain life in a poetic or lyric manner.

One portion of prose that I memorized was the opening sentence of Charles Dickens' epic novel, A Tale of Two Cities. A Tale of Two Cities I mentioned to Mrs. Davis, my English teacher during my senior year, that A Tale of Two Cities has an extremely long opening sentence. My fear was that I might stumble over the latter parts of that sentence. Therefore, as an attempt to be funny before reciting it, I said that Dickens' sentence was more like the opening paragraph. Mrs. Davis insisted upon perfect memorization from her students not a sense of humor. I was able to get the first part out correctly but did stumble over the remainder of the sentence.

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. A Tale of Two Cities compares and contrasts Paris and London around the time of the French Revolution. It tells the story of the class wars between the rich and the poor. However, the Reign of Terror's lifestyle of suffering and death is seen in direct opposition to a renewed and resurrected life. It was indeed a time of suffering and despair while hope and joy was also seen. Dickens replicated that paradox throughout the entire novel. Charles Dickens Dickens said that is was a time a lot like the present day in which he wrote his epic.

As I look back upon 7-decades of my life, much of my life was a lot like the present day being the best of times and the worst of times. In addition, most of the good times years ago, I took for granted without fully appreciating them. When the bad times arrived, I would attempt to prevent the darkness and despair resulting from those times. For me, the good times were what I wanted, and the bad times were what I wanted to avoid. Therein lays my mistake, which most of us replicate during lives. We desire for good times and avoid the bad times. That mistake includes both personal and more global pains and sufferings. Yin yang Interestingly, the Chinese developed the concept of yin yang a couple millennia ago. It is a process that they developed to understand the meaning of a word. For example, we cannot know what hot is unless we know what cold is. To the Western mind, that is obvious, but we do not function and understand life while holding that dichotomy in tension. However, Dickens understood that paradoxical tension.

A Tale of Two Cities began with that dichotomy, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...." The first page of Dickens' novel Beyond the definition of good and bad, there lies a recognition that how we face life and grow must come from the process of wrestling with that paradox. Dickens uses several sets of yin yang words including light/darkness, rebirth/death, and spring of hope/winter of despair in order to flesh out the dichotomy of the good and bad times. Interestingly, Dickens' original title of his novel was Recalled to Life. The Storming of the Bastille promised both hope and despair. While Dickens employs the combinations of opposites, he names some characters in his novel in a most subtle way to convey that same paradox. Lucy is life and light, while Madame Defarge is death and darkness, which is his literary style to reinforce that tension between the good and bad. Madame Defarge Throughout A Tale of Two Cities, there is also the dichotomy between the societal and personal wrestling with the good times and bad times.

To paraphrase Dickens, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." a lot like the present in which we are torn between global and personal good and bad times. In all cases, while we do not have to look for bad times, they will arrive without any effort on our part. Regardless, we need to address and recognize the bad times more fully to appreciate the good times. There is always that tension. In a couple of weeks, I will be celebrating the 72nd naissance of beginning my journey through life. While the first year was spent attempting to crawl, my Grandfather Oakford watched over me as I began toddling, and my Grandfather Campbell protected me in the surf.... In those many decades, I have journeyed far down my yellow brick road and experienced the dichotomy the good and bad times in life. I have had the misfortune of dancing with death twice due to a fall and cancer. Let me assure you, I would not like to go through either again. However, the bad times allow you to appreciate the good times. It was a blessing that I experienced dancing with death. It allowed me to come alive. Dancing with death awakened me to the reality that I am mortal.

Once that reality impacted my mind , I was able really to live...and not merely breathe. While I never looked for suffering, I would not delete those experiences from my journey. It did resurrect me and give me new life. I am more alive, driven, and wired today than ever before. Steve Jobs said essentially the same thing. "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.... No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent." This is a video of A Tale of Two Cities. This is Steve Jobs' complete commencement address. This Is the Best of Times — and the Worst of Times | Desiring God This Is the Best of Times — and the Worst of Times Arrow Founder & Teacher, desiringGod.org Perhaps this is true at every point in the history of a God-ruled, sin-pervaded world.

It was true in 1859, and it is true today. Charles Dickens wrote The Tale of Two Cities in 1859. It begins, 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. He was referring to 1775, the time of the French Revolution. But his point was that period was like the present period in 1859.

In the mid-nineteenth century, “it was the best of times and the worst of times.” In 1859 Charles Spurgeon was 25 years old, George Müller was 54, Hudson Taylor was 27. And Charles Darwin was 50 years old, John Stuart Mill was 53, and Friedrich Nietzsche was 15. Rebellion and Revival God was mightily at work in 1859. In China’s Millions , the most thorough history of the China Inland Mission, Alvyn Austin wrote, In 1859, while Hudson Taylor was still in China [on his first missionary term before founding the China Inland Mission], a revival broke out in Northern Ireland that led to a religious movement so pivotal in British religious history that it came to be called the Revival or “Awakening of ’59.” . . . Although Taylor missed the first phase of the revival, he arrived in Britain in time to reap its benefits. As J.

Edwin Orr noted, “there is reason to believe that the whole [of the China Inland Mission’s first] party [of 1866] was made up of converts and workers of the 1959 Awakening. . . . It is generally agreed that “something happened” in 1859–60, and that its ripples continued to reverberate for the rest of the century. (82–83, 85) The astonishingly fruitful ministries of Spurgeon, Müller, and Taylor were riding the wave of God’s great work in their day. It was the best of times. “Alongside growing secularism, materialism, and self-reliance, there was a great spiritual awakening.” Share on Facebook But other things happened in 1859. Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, and John Stuart Mill, the atheist and utilitarian, published his essay “On Liberty.” So alongside growing secularism in science and politics, growing materialism in the industrial revolution, and growing self-reliance, as God was rejected by many, there was a great spiritual awakening and a great global advance of the gospel of Jesus.

It was the worst of times and the best of times. The Good The same is true today: It is the best of times and the worst of times. For example, historian Mark Noll points out, “In a word, the Christian church has experienced a larger geographical redistribution in the last fifty years than in any comparable period in its history, with the exception of the very earliest years of church history” ( The New Shape of World Christianity , 20). He fleshes it out with concrete examples: At the beginning of the twentieth century, about 71% of professing Christians in the world lived in Europe. By the end of the twentieth century, that number had shrunk to 28%. Now 43% of the Christians live in Latin America and Africa. In 1900, Africa had 10 million Christians, which was about 10% of the population. By 2000, the number of Christians was 360 million, about half the population of the continent. This is probably the largest shift in religious affiliation that has ever occurred, anywhere.

There are 17 million baptized members of the Anglican church in Nigeria, compared with 2.8 million in the United States. The number of practicing Christians in China is approaching the number in the United States. Kenya has more people in Christian churches on Sunday than Canada. This past week in Great Britain, at least fifteen thousand Christian foreign missionaries were hard at work evangelizing the locals. Most of these missionaries are from Africa and Asia. It is the best of times in the history of world Christianity. The Bad Or is it? Noll concludes, Doesn’t the recent history of Christianity spell out the obvious: God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world? Not exactly. If our era has become the best of times, it remains also the worst of times. . . . The ever-expanding numbers who are turning to Christ in the Global south constitute the great marvel of recent history, but . . .

Global terrorism, ISIS, hypocrisy, colonial imperialism, racism, materialism, and a kind of decadence in the West that turns our shame into our glory with historically unprecedented audacity: calling marriage a union between two men, calling a man a woman because he wants to be one, and calling a baby’s legs and arms and hearts “fetal tissue” for the taking. It is the worst of times. And the best of times. The Best and Worst Today “We have seen a glorious and surprising revival of love for the God of sovereign grace and for his mighty gospel.” Share on Facebook In my lifetime I have seen a glorious and surprising revival of love for the God of sovereign grace and for his mighty gospel. Thousands of churches, seminaries, colleges, discipling centers, publishing houses, magazines, books, videos, websites, radio programs, global missions, music artists (from classical to rap), campus ministries, urban ministries, counseling centers, prolife efforts (and more) have come into being with a dynamic of God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated joy and missional courage (what we used to call evangelism) and passion for racial harmony and robust Reformed theology. And none of this is limited to one ethnicity or nation.

It is the best of times. On the other hand, I have witnessed with sometimes depressing heaviness the evisceration of the historic name “evangelical” to a meaningless conglomerate of people whose “evangelical” identity is that they all had grandparents who once believed what the Reformers did. I have seen the mainline Protestant denominations collapse from gospel influence to faint cultural echoes. I have watched the rise of enormous churches and ministries who preach and export to poor nations a prosperity “gospel” that mutes the biblical teaching on suffering and reduces the glorious gospel to earthly betterment rooted in human attitudes, not the glory of Calvary. And to mention just a few more of the many sorrows: the rise of a generation that knows little of the Bible, the disappearance of the weight of God’s awesome presence in worship, the glorification of immorality in entertainment, the explosion and ubiquity of pornography, the indifference in churches to justice for all ethnic groups, the decimation of whole neighborhoods through a dominant drug culture, the collapse of the family with the prevalence of premarital sex and easy divorce and the absence of responsible fathers. And the rise of civic leaders who, instead of standing against the disintegration, function as cheerleaders.

It is the worst of times, and the best of times. How to Live in a Day Like Ours What then shall we do? 1. Don’t assume any specific historical trajectory of good or evil is fixed and unchangeable. God evidently loves to do his surprising work in hard and unlikely times. Surely, this is one of the implications of the history of Kings and Chronicles in the Old Testament. Even great and good kings are sometimes followed by monsters. And wicked kings have godly sons. Josiah was the son and grandson of two of the most wicked kings (Manasseh and Amon). He became king at eight years old. At sixteen he turned the nation on its head with a righteous reformation (2 Chronicles 34:1–4). It is unpredictable. It could happen at any moment, because God is sovereign. 2. Trust the sovereignty of God to turn the insanity of the nations to serve his purposes. In the face of deadly opposition, the early church prayed with the words of Psalm 2, “Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain?” (Acts 4:25). In vain? They succeeded in killing Jesus!

“Trust the sovereignty of God to turn the insanity of the nations to serve his purposes.” Literature.org - The Online Literature Library Charles Dickens Chapter 1 - The Period 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. There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.

It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood. France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it.

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. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution.

But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous. In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting.

Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing their furniture to upholsterers' warehouses for security; the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of "the Captain," gallantly shot him through the head and rode away; the mail was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and then got shot dead himself by the other four, "in consequence of the failure of his ammunition:" after which the mail was robbed in peace; that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand and deliver on Turnham Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue; prisoners in London gaols fought battles with their turkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball; thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at Court drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St.

Giles's, to search for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fir on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at Newgate by the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall; to-day, taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer's boy of sixpence. All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Environed by them, while the Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine rights with a high hand.

Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures- the creatures of this chronicle among the rest- along the roads that lay before them. The Online Literature Library is sponsored by Knowledge Matters Ltd. Last updated

Question: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Answer: A Tale of Two Cities