《双城记》（A Tale of Two Cities）是一部由查尔斯·狄更斯（Charles Dickens）所著的经典文学作品，其令人印象深刻且经常被引用和讨论的开头是：
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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.
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这句话通过对比和并列的手法，描绘了法国大革命前后社会的极端矛盾状态，同时也反映了作者对于历史与人性的深刻洞察。这句话的开头不仅引人入胜，而且蕴含了丰富的文学价值和哲学思考，是文学史上一个著名的开篇之一
