I am Sydney Carton (without the death by guillotine or noble redemption/sacrifice part)

[amari_z]

While I can't claim to have read even the majority of Dickens' novels, I will forever think Sydney Carton of Tale of Two Cities is the best character in Dickens, if not literature. He won my girlish high school aged heart not by his noble sacrifice, but by one exchange alone, which occurs at the beginning of the novel. And this was way, way before I made my dubious career choice.

Sydney has been introduced as:

Sydney Carton, idlest and most unpromising of men, was Stryver's great ally. What the two drank together, between Hilary Term and Michaelmas, might have floated a king's ship. Stryver never had a case in hand, anywhere, but Carton was there, with his hands in his pockets, staring at the ceiling of the court; they went the same Circuit, and even there they prolonged their usual orgies late into the night, and Carton was rumoured to be seen at broad day, going home stealthily and unsteadily to his lodgings, like a dissipated cat. At last, it began to get about, among such as were interested in the matter, that although Sydney Carton would never be a lion, he was an amazingly good jackal, and that he rendered suit and service to Stryver in that humble capacity.

The exchange takes place after the lawyer Stryver has yet again won his case based on Sydney's work.

"You were very sound, Sydney, in the matter of those crown witnesses
to-day. Every question told."

"I always am sound; am I not?"

"I don't gainsay it. What has roughened your temper? Put some punch to it and smooth it again."

With a deprecatory grunt, the jackal again complied.

"The old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School," said Stryver,
nodding his head over him as he reviewed him in the present and the
past, "the old seesaw Sydney. Up one minute and down the next; now
in spirits and now in despondency!"

"Ah!" returned the other, sighing: "yes! The same Sydney, with the
same luck. Even then, I did exercises for other boys, and seldom did
my own.

"And why not?"

"God knows. It was my way, I suppose."

Even though I haven't read the novel since high school, I've never forgotten the passage. Even back then I think I recognized something of myself in Sydney (minus the punch drinking or the wet towel thing, which is highly amusing, but which I didn't quote, or the falling in love with insipid Dickens female).