# Quote — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

> 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 imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life's end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?

- Author: [Charles Dickens](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens.md)
- Book: [A Tale of Two Cities](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A_Tale_of_Two_Cities#Chapter_III_-_The_Night_Shadows) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Topics: [death](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/death.md)
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities/a-wonderful-fact

## More from this book

> I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other's soul, than I was in the souls of both.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities/i-see-that.md)

Topics: [memory](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/memory.md)

> I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities/i-see-the.md)

Topics: [death](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/death.md)

> 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.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities/i-see-a-beautiful.md)

Topics: [freedom](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom.md), [hope](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/hope.md)