Important Quotations Explained
1. My
convict looked round him for the first time, and saw me . . . I
looked at him eagerly when he looked at me, and slightly moved my
hands and shook my head. I had been waiting for him to see me, that
I might try to assure him of my innocence. It was not at all expressed
to me that he even comprehended my intention, for he gave me a look
that I did not understand, and it all passed in a moment. But if
he had looked at me for an hour or for a day, I could not have remembered
his face ever afterwards as having been more attentive.
2. “Pip,
dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together,
as I may say, and one man's a blacksmith, and one's a whitesmith,
and one's a goldsmith, and one's a coppersmith. Diwisions among
such must come, and must be met as they come.”
3. “I
begin to think,” said Estella, in a musing way, after another moment
of calm wonder, “that I almost understand how this comes about.
If you had brought up your adopted daughter wholly in the dark confinement
of these rooms, and had never let her know that there was such a
thing as the daylight by which she has never once seen your face—if
you had done that, and then, for a purpose, had wanted her to understand
the daylight and know all about it, you would have been disappointed
and angry? . . .”
“Or,” said Estella,
“—which is a nearer case—if you had taught her, from the dawn of
her intelligence, with your utmost energy and might, that there
was such a thing as daylight, but that it was made to be her enemy
and destroyer, and she must always turn against it, for it had blighted
you and would else blight her—if you had done this, and then, for
a purpose, had wanted her to take naturally to the daylight and
she could not do it, you would have been disappointed and angry?
. . .”
“So,” said Estella, “I must be taken
as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not
mine, but the two together make me.”
4. “Look'ee
here, Pip. I'm your second father. You're my son—more to me nor
any son. I've put away money, only for you to spend. When I was
a hired-out shepherd in a solitary hut, not seeing no faces but
faces of sheep till I half-forgot wot men's and women's faces wos
like, I see yourn. . . . I see you there a many times plain as ever
I see you on them misty marshes. 'Lord strike me dead!' I says each
time—and I goes out in the open air to say it under the open heavens—'but wot,
if I gets liberty and money, I'll make that boy a gentleman!' And
I done it. Why, look at you, dear boy! Look at these here lodgings
of yourn, fit for a lord! A lord? Ah! You shall show money with
lords for wagers, and beat 'em!”
5. “Dear
Magwitch, I must tell you, now at last. You understand what I say?”
A
gentle pressure on my hand.
“You had a
child once, whom you loved and lost.”
A
stronger pressure on my hand.
“She lived
and found powerful friends. She is living now. She is a lady and
very beautiful. And I love her!”
