Laudator Temporis Acti

Excerpts from Charles Dickens, Great Expectations:

Ch. 3:

"Look at Pork alone. There's a subject! If you want a subject, look at Pork!"

Ch. 3:

I think the Romans must have aggravated one another very much, with their noses. Perhaps, they became the restless people they were, in consequence.

Ch. 7:

"Tho' I'm oncommon fond of reading, too."

"Are you, Joe?"

"On-common. Give me," said Joe, "a good book, or a good newspaper, and sit me down afore a good fire, and I ask no better."

Ch. 8:

"Is that the name of this house, miss?"

"One of its names, boy."

"It has more than one, then, miss?"

"One more. Its other name was Satis; which is Greek, or Latin, or Hebrew, or all three - or all one to me - for enough."

"Enough House," said I; "that's a curious name, miss."

"Yes," she replied; "but it meant more than it said. It meant, when it was given, that whoever had this house, could want nothing else."

Ch. 8:

In the little world in which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.

Ch. 9:

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

Ch. 11:

"I have a pretty large experience of boys, and you're a bad set of fellows."

Ch. 16:

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.

Ch. 19:

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.

Ch. 25:

She was a cousin - an indigestive single woman, who called her rigidity religion, and her liver love.

Ch. 25:

"No; the office is one thing, and private life is another. When I go into the office, I leave the Castle behind me, and when I come into the Castle, I leave the office behind me."

Ch. 27:

So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.

Ch. 28:

All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers.

Ch. 34:

There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.

Ch. 38:

"You know he has nothing to recommend him but money, and a ridiculous roll of addle-headed predecessors; now, don't you?"

Ch. 46:

"What else can be the consequence," said Herbert, in explanation, "if he will cut the cheese?"

Ch. 46 (an apt name for me):

Gruffandgrim

Ch. 55:

"Halloa! Here's a church!" .... "Let's go in!" .... "Halloa!" said he. "Here's a couple of pair of gloves! Let's put 'em on!" .... "Halloa!" said Wemmick. "Here's Miss Skiffins! Let's have a wedding."