Sentences worth returning to

Charles Dickens

Some sentences we must read a second time, or even a third time, because we didn't understand them the first time. This may be our fault, perhaps because our mind wasn't focused on the sentence, or it may be because of bad writing. More often it is because of long, complex sentences, difficult words or unfamiliar ideas.

And then there are those sentences we reread simply because they are so good, so beautifully written, so wonderfully expressed.

One encounters both kinds of sentences in Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens, the novel I commented upon a few days ago. My edition of the novel has 777 pages, but I must have read the equivalent of well over 800 pages simply because I read so many sentences more than once. Dickens didn't write many simple sentences. He liked to throw everything into them, so some need to be reread to fully grasp them. Others beckon us to read them again because they are so good. Here are a few I found that fall into that latter category.

"She was neatly, but quietly attired; so much so, indeed, that it seemed as though her dress, if it had been worn by one who imparted fewer graces of her own to it, might have looked poor and shabby."

This line reminded me somehow of the atrocious hairdo Bo Derek had in the movie 10. At least it would have looked atrocious on almost any other woman. But this was Bo Derek.

"It may be further remarked that Miss Knag still aimed at youth, though she had shot beyond it years ago ..."

This sentence goes on and on, but this is the part worth rereading.

"It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one that the last."

At least every new mother believes so.

"Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; but it cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues -- faith and hope."

I mentioned this to a group around a dinner table recently, and a woman commented that this was no less true of a grandmother's pride.