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21 " Dickens’s enduring themes: the deleterious effects of ignorance and want, the necessity for charity, the benefits of goodwill, family unity, and the need for celebration of the life force, including the pleasures of good food and drink, and good company. "
― Les Standiford , The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits
22 " Ebenezer Scrooge is no castoff drunk, but the very emblem of economic achievement. "
23 " allowing the cynical reader to proceed contentedly through the story alongside the sentimentalist. "
24 " led to the emigration of one such unemployed Scottish hand-weaver named Carnegie to the United States, where his son Andrew would become the chief industrialist of all time.) "
25 " According to California Department of Transportation figures, upward of 275,000 vehicles travel Interstae 5 through the Newhall Pass dividing the Santa Clarita and San Fernando watersheds each day. There is no way to tally the number of individuals inside those vehicles, but taking into account the tendency of the average American driver, it is safe to speculate that at least 275,001 travelers per day have the opportunity to glance eastward of the thundering highway ... "
― Les Standiford
26 " The more a man learns, Dickens said, “the better, gentler, kinder man he must become. When he knows how much great minds have suffered for the truth in every age and time…he will become more tolerant of other men’s belief in all matters, "
27 " And yet he forced himself to confront hard truths. Perhaps it was not “them”—the jealous critics and the fickle readers—in whom the fault lay. Perhaps he had let his disappointment with America in particular and with human nature in general overwhelm his powers of storytelling and characterization in his recent work—perhaps he had simply taken it for granted that an adoring public would sit still for whatever he offered it. "
28 " paean "
29 " Most important, perhaps there was a way to do so without browbeating or scolding, or mounting a soapbox. Perhaps he could get them without their knowing they were got. If he could only find the way. "