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Posted 2007-12-27, 05:00 PM
in reply to Demosthenes's post starting "True, reading such books certainly..."
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The sad part is Dickens didn't even write the introduction. However, I'll share with you several quotes that surprised me, and are an indication of how writing can easily transcend the realm of fiction for fiction's sake:
Quote:
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At the same time, it operates as a critique on certain forms of 'useful facts' rather than than to introduce them in any way to the world of the imagination, to concepts of aesthetic pleasure removed from functionality, and to the idea that compassionate understanding of the lives and circumstances of others is of infintely more use than the accumulation of knowledge.
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Quote:
'Blitzer,' he implores, pathetically, 'have you a heart?'
'The circulation, sir,' returned Blitzer, smiling at the oddity of the question, 'couldn't be carried on without one. No man, sir, aquainted with the facts established by Harvey relating to the circulation of the blood, can doubt that I have a heart.'
'Is it accessible,' cried Mr. Gradgrind, 'to any compassionate influence?'
'It is accessible to Reason, sir,' returned the excellent young man. 'And to nothing else.'
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Quote:
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It does not seem to me to be enough to say of any description that it is the exact truth. The exact truth must be there; but the merit or art in the narrator, is the manner of stating the truth.
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Not Dickens said:
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...the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast... that we manufacture everything except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to reform a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages.
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Last edited by GravitonSurge; 2007-12-27 at 05:08 PM.
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