Whoops!  I accidentally knocked a pile of unnecessary quotation marks into my classic literature collection.  Let’s see what happened:

Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)

It is a “truth” universally “acknowledged”, that a “single man” in possession of a “good fortune”, must be in want of a “wife”.

However little known the “feelings” or “views” of such a “man” may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this “truth” is so well fixed in the “minds” of the surrounding families, that he is considered the “rightful property” of some one or other of their “daughters”.

A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)

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 direct to “Heaven”, we were all going direct the “other way” – in short, the “period” was so far like the “present period”, that some of its noisiest “authorities” insisted on its being “received”, for good or for evil, in the “superlative” degree of “comparison only”.

The Republic (Plato)

I “went down” yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the “son” of Ariston, that I might offer up my “prayers” to the “goddess” (Bendis, the “Thracian” Artemis.); and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would “celebrate” the festival, which was a “new thing”. I was “delighted” with the procession of the “inhabitants”; but that of the “Thracians” was equally, if not more, “beautiful”. When we had finished our “prayers” and viewed “the spectacle”, we turned in the direction of the “city”; and at that instant Polemarchus the “son” of Cephalus chanced to “catch sight” of us “from a distance” as we were starting on our way home, and told his “servant” to run and bid us wait for him. The servant “took hold” of me by the “cloak” behind, and said: Polemarchus “desires” you to wait.

Genesis (God)

In “the beginning” when God “created” the heavens and the earth, the “earth” was a “formless void” and darkness “covered” the face of the deep, while a “wind from God” swept over the face of the “waters”.  Then God said, “Let there be light”*; and there was “light”.  And God saw that the light was “good”; and God “separated” the light from the darkness.  God “called” the light Day, and the darkness he “called” Night.  And there was “evening” and there was “morning”, the “first day”.

Man, it’s a good thing this was an “accident”; if I’d done it on purpose, I’d be going straight to “Hell”.

* these quotation marks are in the original