great expectations

I've always found it really rewarding to finish a book, especially when it's 485 pages & somewhat challenging. Despite knowing full well that I'd be tired & crabby today, I pushed ahead & stayed up until about 1 am to finish Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

I read it once before in high school before I watched the movie rendition with Gwenyth Paltrow & Ethan Hawke. In retrospect, I don't know if I ever really was able to follow along that well with the book, but I loved the movie & the general story line.

When the line of Penguin Classic books was released, Great Expectations was the first one I bought. Reading out of something so beautiful makes it much more enjoyable, even when the storyline itself is already so perfect.

Great Expectations isn't one of those cookie-cutter perfect books where everything turns out well & that's probably why I like it so much. It also has some great lines, that I couldn't help but mark off while I was reading.

So without further ado, my favorites:

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"Break their hearts my pride & hope. Break their hearts and have no mercy!"

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Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlaying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before -- more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.

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"I adopted her to be loved. I bred her & educated her, to be loved. I developed her into what she is, that she might be loved. Love her!"

She said the words often enough, & there could be no doubt that she meant to say it; but if the often repeated word had been hate instead of love -- despair -- revenge -- dire death -- it could not have sounded from her lips more like a curse.

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"You will get me out of your thoughts in a week."

"Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since - on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. 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. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!"

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"As she grew, & promised to be very beautiful, I gradually did worse, & with my praises, & with my jewels, & with my teachings, & with this figure of myself always before her warning her to back & point my lessons, I stole her heart away & put ice in its place."

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