HedgeSpeak: The Art of finding the right "Quote"

Invariably, managers letters describing the past years performance would often start with a famous quote. Often after a poor performance year. This was proven when in January 1999, 2000 and 2001 multiple managers managing different strategies all used the following quote in their first paragraph:

“To borrow a quote from a Charles Dickens’, A Tale of Two Cities, which aptly depicts XYZ’s return profile for the year: ‘It was the best of times it was the worst of times’.”

I would always wonder if there was a course "Hedge Fund Writing Class 101" that many hedge fund managers or their respective ghost writing marketing staff would attend.

Whenever I hear Dickens mentioned, I immediately now relate to bad returns and the hedge fund industry.