A Tale?

"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 to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way -- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that way of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
-- Opening Sentence (and paragraph) of A Tale of Cities

And so Charles Dickens described the build-up to the French Revolution. Reading this book as a child, the story was introduced in an abridged version in which there'd be a page of content followed by a picture describing what was read. This sentence followed a picture cut into two images: the French aristocracy feasting at a grand banquet and a group of children dressed in rags desparately in need of food.

Now, of course, we are not living in the time of the French Revolution, but could not this very quote, published in 1857, be used to open up a newspaper, book or periodical to describe the last few months?

It certainly is amazing on how timeless some prose can be.