We all have some experience of a feeling, that comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before, in a remote time - of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects, and circumstances.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the idea of déjà vu and the profound connection between past and present experiences.
Charles Dickens expresses a sense of nostalgia and the eeriness of experiencing moments that feel familiar, as if they have occurred in a distant past. This feeling highlights the continuity of human experience and the ways in which we are connected to our history, suggesting that our current lives are intertwined with the echoes of our past.
In practice
In a speech about the cyclical nature of history.
I recollected one story there was in the village, how that on a certain night in the year (it might be that very night for anything I knew), all the dead people came out of the ground and sat at the heads of their own graves till morning.
A silent look of affection and regard when all other eyes are turned coldly away-the consciousness that we possess the sympathy and affection of one being when all others have deserted us-is a hold, a stay, a comfort, in the deepest affliction, which no wealth could purchase, or power bestow.
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.
There are not a few among the disciples of charity who require, in their vocation, scarcely less excitement than the votaries of pleasure in theirs.
You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer,” said Miss Pross, in her breathing. “Nevertheless, you shall not get the better of me. I am an Englishwoman.
Christmas is a poor excuse every 25th of December to pick a man's pockets.
I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
My father so appropriately put it that we are certainly the only animal that makes conscious choices that are bad for our survival as a species.
Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.
I do it because I love animals and I saw the reality. And I just couldn't ignore it anymore. I'm healthier for it, I'm happier for it. I can't imagine that if you're putting something in your body that is filled with fear or anxiety or pain, that that isn't somehow going to be inside of you.
A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone blind to most of what others see
The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely that man is descended from some lowly-organised form, will, I regret to think, be highly distasteful to many persons. But there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from barbarians.
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