Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

The time came, without bringing with it any relief to my feelings, and the company came.

He just like me

“Come here! You may kiss me if you like.” I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. I think I would have gone through a great deal to kiss her cheek.

And to make it worse, they all asked me from time to time—in short, whenever they had nothing else to do—why I didn’t enjoy myself? And what could I possibly do then but say that I was enjoying myself—when I wasn’t!

She was not beautiful—she was common, and could not be like Estella

“If I could only get myself to fall in love with you—

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

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

I could not have said what I was afraid of, for my fear was altogether undefined and vague, but there was great fear upon me.

Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.

Oh, the sense of distance and disparity that came upon me, and the inaccessibility that came about her!

In a word, it was impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present from the innermost life of my life.

I verily believe that her not remembering and not minding in the least, made me cry again, inwardly—and that is the sharpest crying of all.

Hes so real

“what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter—as I did!”

“If I say yes, may I kiss the cheek again?” “You should have asked before you touched the hand. But, yes, if you like.”

I should have felt that she held my heart in her hand because she wilfully chose to do it, and not because it would have wrung any tenderness in her, to crush it and throw it away.

Their influence on my own character I disguised from my recognition as much as possible, but I knew very well that it was not all good.

Finally

“No, don’t be hurt,” she pleaded quite pathetically; “let only me be hurt, if I have been ungenerous.”

A great event in my life, the turning point of my life, now opens on my view. But before I proceed to narrate it, and before I pass on to all the changes it involved, I must give one chapter to Estella. It is not much to give to the theme that so long filled my heart.

CUTEEEEEEEE

Let my body be where it would, my spirit was always wandering, wandering, wandering about that house.

I suffered every kind and degree of torture that Estella could cause me.

I never had one hour’s happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death.

I saw in this that Estella was set to wreak Miss Havisham’s revenge on men, and that she was not to be given to me until she had gratified it for a term.

“I am what you have made me. Take all the praise, take all the blame; take all the success, take all the failure; in short, take me.”

“Moths, and all sorts of ugly creatures,” replied Estella, with a glance towards him, “hover about a lighted candle. Can the candle help it?”

Og hot girl

“Do you deceive and entrap him, Estella?” “Yes, and many others—all of them but you.

I need them together so bad

So, in my case; all the work, near and afar, that tended to the end had been accomplished, and in an instant the blow was struck, and the roof of my stronghold dropped upon me.

The way he talks about feelings is so human

I would not have gone back to Joe now, I would not have gone back to Biddy now, for any consideration—simply, I suppose, because my sense of my own worthless conduct to them was greater than every consideration.

Finally some reflection

In every rage of wind and rush of rain, I heard pursuers. Twice I could have sworn there was a knocking and whispering at the outer door.

Tell tale heart

To state that my terrible patron carried this little black book about the world solely to swear people on in cases of emergency would be to state what I never quite established—but this I can say, that I never knew him put it to any other use.

LMAOOOOOOOOOO

The imaginary student pursued by the misshapen creature he had impiously made was not more wretched than I, pursued by the creature who had made me, and recoiling from him with a stronger repulsion the more he admired me and the fonder he was of me.

Herbert received me with open arms, and I had never felt before so blessedly what it is to have a friend.

Can you doubt, if there is but one in it, which is the one, and if there is two in it, which is much the worst one?’

“who am I, for God’s sake, that I should be kind?”

“Estella,” said I turning to her now, and trying to command my trembling voice, “you know I love you. You know that I have loved you long and dearly.”

think that in the endurance of her own trial, she forgot mine, Estella.”

Among those few, there may be one who loves you even as dearly, though he has not loved you as long as I. Take him, and I can bear it better for your sake!”

“Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself.

My heart

Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil.

Why did you who read this commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own, last year, last month, last week?

He was the kindest of nurses, and at stated times took off the bandages, and steeped them in the cooling liquid that was kept ready, and put them on again, with a patient tenderness that I was deeply grateful for.

Boyfriends

This pain of the mind was much harder to strive against than any bodily pain I suffered, and Herbert, seeing that, did his utmost to hold my attention engaged.

The death close before me was terrible, but far more terrible than death was the dread of being misremembered after death.

“I will never stir from your side,” said I, “when I am suffered to be near you. Please God, I will be as true to you as you have been to me!”

“Herbert, I shall always need you, because I shall always love you, but my need is no greater now than at another time.”

“Thank’ee, dear boy, thank’ee. God bless you! You’ve never deserted me, dear boy.” I pressed his hand in silence, for I could not forget that I had once meant to desert him.

P. S. Ever the best of friends.

I often wondered how I had conceived the old idea of his inaptitude, until I was one day enlightened by the reflection that perhaps the inaptitude had never been in him at all, but had been in me.

“I work pretty hard for a sufficient living, and therefore—Yes, I do well!”