Tuesday 7 February 2012

Happy Birthday Charles

1. Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun, one day.

2. NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. 
            
3. London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth . . .

4. Night is generally my time for walking.
    
5. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . .
6. In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark bridge which is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone, as an autumn evening was closing in. 

7. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
 

8. Marley was dead, to begin with.

9. My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip.

10. Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse . . .
 

  

1 comment:

  1. Really enjoyed this post! What a good idea, all the opening lines!

    ReplyDelete

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