The exact words
The sentence everyone knows half of
A Tale of Two Cities opens with one of the most famous first lines in fiction: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Most people stop there, but the sentence keeps going for more than a hundred words, a drumbeat of opposites. It was the age of wisdom and of foolishness, belief and incredulity, Light and Darkness, the spring of hope and 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.”
Then comes the turn. “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.” In other words, the past was much like now: the loudest voices insisted that everything was either the best ever or the worst ever.
What Dickens was doing
The novel opens in 1775, years before the storming of the Bastille, and follows characters in London and Paris into the Terror. Dickens was writing in 1859, seventy years later, for readers who knew how the story would end. His opening reminds them that people living through history never see it clearly, and it pokes fun at the habit, as common in his day as in ours, of declaring one’s own time uniquely wonderful or uniquely terrible.
The novel came out in weekly parts in Dickens’s new magazine, All the Year Round, from April to November 1859, so the opening had to grab readers immediately. The paired contrasts also set up the whole book, which is built on doubles: two cities, two men who look alike, two kinds of love and two kinds of violence.
How to use it
The opening works at graduations and in any speech about a turning point; “we had everything before us, we had nothing before us” is especially good for young audiences. In an essay, quote the end of the sentence too; Dickens’s joke about “noisiest authorities” is what most quoters miss.
What people get wrong
A simple statement that the past was a time of contrasts.
The sentence is longer and sharper than the opening phrase suggests. It ends by mocking the “noisiest authorities” of every age, including Dickens's own, who insist their time is the best or worst ever.
Timeline
- 1775The year in which the novel opens, with Britain and France both ruled by kings and revolution not far off.
- April 1859Dickens begins serializing A Tale of Two Cities in his new weekly magazine, All the Year Round. The first installment opens with the famous sentence.
- November 1859The final installment appears and the novel is published as a book.
Use it in a speech
Questions people ask
What does “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” mean?
Dickens describes the years before the French Revolution as a time of extreme contrasts, hope and despair, wisdom and foolishness, and says it was much like his own era.
What book is it from?
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens's 1859 novel set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution.
How long is the full sentence?
It runs to 119 words, a series of paired opposites ending with “in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
Cite this quote
These cite the original source directly, so you can use them in an essay or paper. Always check your teacher's required style.