— A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Book 3, Chapter 15
About this quote
हिन्दी में
जो काम मैं अब कर रहा हूँ, वह मेरे किए हुए हर काम से कहीं, कहीं अधिक अच्छा है।
What it means
The measuring in this sentence is entirely private. Carton does not say the act is better than what other men do, or good by any standard outside himself — only than I have ever done. The claim rests on a comparison with his own record, which is what lets a man who has achieved nothing make it without boasting.
The act itself is never named. That I do is present tense for something already under way and left blank, which is why the line lifts so easily onto posters as a general endorsement of sacrifice. In place it is not general: the thing is dying under another man’s name, and the sentence continues to a matching clause about rest — a far, far better rest than he has ever known, which is to say death.
What it teaches you
When you are weighing something you have done, notice which comparison you reach for first. Most of us reach sideways — to colleagues, siblings, strangers online — and that answer describes the field rather than you. Carton’s comparison runs backwards along his own life, and it is the only one capable of registering that a person has changed.
अर्थ और सीख
कार्टन अपने काम को किसी और के काम से नहीं, सिर्फ़ अपने ही अब तक के जीवन से तौलता है — इसीलिए एक बेकार गुज़ारी ज़िंदगी वाला आदमी भी यह बात बिना डींग के कह सकता है। वाक्य यह कभी नहीं बताता कि वह ‘काम’ है क्या, इसलिए यह आसानी से त्याग की आम सूक्ति बन जाता है; असल में वह काम किसी और के नाम पर मृत्यु स्वीकार करना है। सीख यह कि अपने कामों को दूसरों से नहीं, अपने पिछले ख़ुद से नापिए — बदलाव सिर्फ़ उसी तुलना में दिखता है।
Where it comes from
Sydney Carton’s last thought, closing the novel. Dickens frames it as something Carton might have said had he been given the chance to speak, which is why the book’s final lines read as a vision rather than a speech.
It is a redemption the character arranges for himself after a wasted life, and the sentence’s doubled ‘far, far’ is doing the work — a man reaching for a scale of goodness he has never had access to before.
