Help with Questions to A Tale of Two Cities: A Tale of Two Cities opens with

A Tale of Two Cities opens with “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” one of the best-known passages in English literature. What does Dickens mean by setting the stage with such polarities? For whom was it the best and the worst of times? Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities in the late 1850s. Why does this passage continue to be quoted today? In what ways does our own present period merit such an assessment?