[ExI] quote of the day

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Sat, Jun 11, 2016 at 9:44 AM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> “Aha, you are an advocate of useful knowledge”
>
> “Certainly”
>
> “You say that a man’s first job is to earn a living, and that the first
task of education
> is to equip him for that job?”
>
> “Of course.”
>
> “Well, allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental
> Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work
> efficiently, if narrowly and with no extra bits or useless parts.  I like
the
> mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless
but
> fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable
> amount of healthy dirt.  Shake the machine and it goes out of order; shake
> the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position.”
>
> Robertson Davies, in the Salterton trilogy

This reminds of a book on writing I read a while back. In a section on
choosing the right word, the author recommending sometimes one would do
better to find the wrong word, even the absolutely wrong word, for a given
passage and see what happens.

Regards,

Dan
  Sample my latest Kindle book, "The Late Mr. Gurlitt," at:
http://mybook.to/Gurlitt
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