I had the good fortune to read the book Great Expectations by Charles Dickens over the break. Thoroughly enjoyed it. What I did not realize is that it was a week by week serial (the Young & Restless or Eastenders of the time):

Great Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens first serialised in All the Year Round^[1] from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. It is regarded as one of his greatest and most sophisticated novels, and is one of his most enduringly popular, having been adapted for stage and screen over 250 times.

A few quotes stuck with me, make of them what you will:

‘Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper but had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to Godliness and some people do the same by their religion.’ page 23

‘That was a memorable day for 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 chaining of iron or golf, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link of one memorable day.’ page 72

‘throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise’  page 218

‘In the little world in which children have their existence whosever bring them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice. It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and it rocking horse stands many hand high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish Hunter’  page 6