A Visit to the Circumlocution Office

Happy 200th Birthday, Charles Dickens!

I read you because I read Joan Aiken--she told me to read you, in fact--and it was one of the best things I've done. Thank you for Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend in particular, and for these:

Great Expectations

"They took up several obviously wrong people, and they ran their heads very hard against wrong ideas, and persisted in trying to fit the circumstances to the ideas, instead of trying to extract ideas from the circumstances."

"'I am ashamed to say it,' I returned, 'and yet it's no worse to say it than to think it. You call me a lucky fellow. Of course, I am. I was a blacksmith's boy but yesterday; I am -- what shall I say I am -- to-day?'"

"For an hour or more, I remained too stunned to think; and it was not until I began to think, that I began fully to know how wrecked I was, and how the ship in which I had sailed was gone to pieces."

Our Mutual Friend

"'My daughter, there are times of moral danger when the hardest virtuous resolution to form is flight, and when the most heroic bravery is flight.'"

"'This reminds me, Godmother, to ask you a serious question. You are as wise as wise can be (having been brought up by the fairies), and you can tell me this: Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?'"

 

"'No man knows till the time comes, what depths are within him. To some men it never comes; let them rest and be thankful! To me, you brought it; on me, you forced it; and the bottom of this raging sea,' striking himself upon the breast, 'has been heaved up ever since.'"

"'No one is useless in this world,' retorted the Secretary, 'who lightens the burden of it for any one else.'"

"'Then idiots talk,' said Eugene, leaning back, folding his arms, smoking with his eyes shut, and speaking slightly through his nose, 'of Energy. If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that I abominate, it is energy.'"

"No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot."