《双城记》开篇：英文原著带中文翻译

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

那是最美好的时代，那是最糟糕的时代；那是智慧的年头，那是愚昧的年头；那是信仰的时期，那是怀疑的时期；那是光明的季节，那是黑暗的季节；那是希望的春天，那是失望的冬天；我们眼前应有尽有，我们眼前一无所有；我们全都直奔天堂，我们全都直奔相反的方向。总而言之，那个时代和当今这个时代如此相像，以至于一些最喧闹的权威人士坚持只用最高级的比较来评价它，无论说好说坏。

There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.

英格兰宝座上有一位大下巴的国王和一位相貌平平的王后；法兰西宝座上有一位大下巴的国王和一位容貌美丽的王后。在这两个国家里，那些掌管国家面包和鱼类的权贵们都清清楚楚地知道，一切事物都已永远定局。

It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood.

那是公元一千七百七十五年。在那个蒙福的时期，如同当今一样，神灵的启示也赐予了英格兰。南科特太太不久前刚过了她二十五岁蒙福的生日，一位近卫骑兵团的预言士兵曾预告她那崇高的降临，宣称已经安排妥当，要把伦敦和威斯敏斯特吞没。就连公鸡巷的鬼魂，在敲击出它的信息之后，也只不过沉寂了整整十二年，而去年这一年的鬼魂们（在独创性上超自然地匮乏）也敲击出了它们的信息。近日，一些尘世事件中的普通信息，从美洲的英国臣民大会传到了英国王室和人民那里。说来奇怪，这些信息对人类来说，竟比公鸡巷那一窝鬼魂通过任何一只小鸡传来的任何消息都更为重要。

France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.

法国在总体上，在属灵事务上不如她那执盾持三叉戟的姐妹受眷顾，她极其平稳地滚下山坡，印制纸币并挥霍纸币。在她的基督教牧师们的引导下，她还以诸如此类的人道成就自娱，比如判处一个青年砍掉双手，用钳子拔掉舌头，活活烧死他的身体，只因他没有在雨中跪下，向一支从他视野内大约五六十码外经过的肮脏僧侣队伍致敬。很有可能，当那个受难者被处死时，在法国和挪威的森林里，已经有一些树木在生长，它们已被伐木人命运标出，要倒下来锯成木板，做成某种带口袋和刀子的活动框架，在历史上令人胆寒。很有可能，就在同一天，在巴黎附近一些耕种沉重土地的农夫的简陋外屋里，一些粗笨的马车避着风雨停在那里，车上溅满乡间的泥浆，猪在周围嗅来嗅去，家禽在上面栖息，而农夫死亡早已把它们选定，要作他革命时的囚车。但是那个伐木人和那个农夫，虽然不停地工作，却默默无声，他们裹着脚步走动时，没有人听见他们。更何况，但凡怀疑他们醒着，就是无神论和叛逆。