few people know what secrecy there is in the young under terror. No matter how unreasonable the terror, so that it be terror.
 Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861). copy citation

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Author Charles Dickens
Source Great Expectations
Topic children terror secrecy
Date 1861
Language English
Reference
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Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1400/1400-h/1400-h.htm

Context

“I was never allowed a candle to light me to bed, and, as I went upstairs in the dark, with my head tingling,—from Mrs. Joe's thimble having played the tambourine upon it, to accompany her last words,—I felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience that the hulks were handy for me. I was clearly on my way there. I had begun by asking questions, and I was going to rob Mrs. Joe.
Since that time, which is far enough away now, I have often thought that few people know what secrecy there is in the young under terror. No matter how unreasonable the terror, so that it be terror. I was in mortal terror of the young man who wanted my heart and liver; I was in mortal terror of my interlocutor with the iron leg; I was in mortal terror of myself, from whom an awful promise had been extracted; I had no hope of deliverance through my all-powerful sister, who repulsed me at every turn; I am afraid to think of what I might have done on requirement, in the secrecy of my terror.” source

Meaning and analysis

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