Dickens is reported to have once told fellow novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky that all of his good characters were the people that he wished that he were, while his bad characters were the ones that he really felt himself to be. Probably no character better illustrates the possibility of finding the good and the bad in the same person than Sidney Carton, the dissipated English barrister who becomes the hero of "A Tale of Two Cities," sacrificing himself so the woman he loves can be with the man she loves. Among the most famous lines in English literature (along with the opening lines of "A Tale of Two Cities": "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...") are Carton's parting words: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."
