Charles Dickens

As has probably been made evident by my other blog postings, I really like to find a couple of lines of each work that I read to analyze in greater detail. I find that by choosing a couple of lines to write about I do not have to completely understand the entire work, which I often do not anyway. After reading the e-text of Charles Dickens A Visit to Newgate I found that the first couple of lines were really interesting to me and they actually made me want to read further into the work which is what the beginning of a work should do. I enjoyed the work overall, but I did find some of it difficult to understand because of the way that it is written. It is something that I found insight in and that is always something that I enjoy. The first sentence of the work is a bit long, but I was really drawn to it even after reading the entire work.

“‘The force of habit’ is a trite phrase in everybody’s mouth; and it is not a little remarkable that those who use it most as applied to others, unconsciously afford in their own persons singular examples of the power which habit and custom exercise over the minds of men, and of the little reflection they are apt to bestow on subjects with which every day’s experience has rendered them familiar.”

To me, this one line contains a great deal of insight into the way that people often view the world that they see every day. Once you have become familiar with something in your life you will probably give little consideration to how important it is unless it is no longer there one day. Each day those of us with the ability to walk probably do so and may or may not think about just how lucky we are to be able to do so without realizing how lucky we are to be able to do so. We often become oblivious to how wonderful some things that we do everyday actually are and I felt that this one sentence from Charles Dickens’ work was somewhat of a wakeup call to me to think about how fortunate I actually am.