Great Expectations Time Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #1

"On this day of the year, long before you were born, this heap of decay," stabbing with her crutched stick at the pile of cobwebs on the table but not touching it, "was brought here. It and I have worn away together. The mice have gnawed at it, and sharper teeth than teeth of mice have gnawed at me." (11.99)

Niiiiiice. Miss Havisham may have stopped all the clocks at Satis House, but you can't stop time—or mildew, mold, and mice.

Quote #2

 "So!" she said, without being startled or surprised; "the days have worn away, have they?" (11.46)

Miss Havisham may not have any working clocks, but she does have impeccable sense of time: she knows exactly when her birthday falls each year.

Quote #3

So unchanging was the dull old house, the yellow light in the darkened room, the faded spectre in the chair by the dressing-table glass, that I felt as if the stopping of the clocks had stopped Time in that mysterious place, and, while I and everything else outside it grew older, it stood still. (17.2)

Satis House may show the passage of time, but somehow it seems untouched by time—weird. Like Miss Havisham, it's both stuck in time and destroyed by time.