# Quote — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

> Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson's was the triumphant perfection of inconvenience. After bursting open a door of idiotic obstinacy with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Tellson's down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop, with two little counters, where the oldest of men made your cheque shake as if the wind rustled it, while they examined the signature by the dingiest of windows, which were always under a shower-bath of mud from Fleet-street, and which were made the dingier by their own iron bars proper, and the heavy shadow of Temple Bar. If your business necessitated your seeing "the House," you were put into a species of Condemned Hold at the back, where you meditated on a misspent life, until the House came with its hands in its pockets, and you could hardly blink at it in the dismal twilight. Your money came out of, or went into, wormy old wooden drawers, particles of which flew up your nose and down your throat when they were opened and shut. Your bank-notes had a musty odour, as if they were fast decomposing into rags again. Your plate was stowed away among the neighbouring cesspools, and evil communications corrupted its good polish in a day or two.

- 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_I_-_Five_Years_Later) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities/thus-it-had

## 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)