“Foolish people laugh at those readers a century ago who wept over the novels of Dickens. Is it a sign of superior intellect to read anything and everything unmoved, in a grey, unfeeling Limbo?”

— Robertson Davies, book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

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Robertson Davies282

Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and nov… 1913–1995

William Lyon Phelps (1865–1943) American author, critic and scholar

“The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest species of literary exertion, and that novel reading was a dangerous luxury and an utter waste of time.”

Wilkie Collins (1824–1889) British writer

Source: My Miscellanies

“The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Source: Dialogues in Limbo (1926), Ch. 3, P. 57

“That's great art — Everything is self-evident. I am made to cry with those who cry, and laugh with those who laugh.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"Entertainment or Education? (1936)
Context: The theater-goer in conventional dramatic theater says: Yes, I've felt that way, too. That's the way I am. That's life. That's the way it will always be. The suffering of this or that person grips me because there is no escape for him. That's great art — Everything is self-evident. I am made to cry with those who cry, and laugh with those who laugh. But the theater-goer in the epic theater says: I would never have thought that. You can't do that. That's very strange, practically unbelievable. That has to stop. The suffering of this or that person grips me because there is an escape for him. That's great art — nothing is self-evident. I am made to laugh about those who cry, and cry about those who laugh.