There Is A Wisdom Of The

Spoken by Thomas Gradgrind in Book Three of Hard Times (1854), in a moment of belated self-reckoning after his daughter Louisa's emotional collapse. Gradgrind has spent the novel insisting that only "Facts" matter and that sentiment is worthless — an educational philosophy modelled on the utilitarian thinking Dickens was satirising. His tentative acknowledgment that there exists a "wisdom of the heart" alongside the "wisdom of the head" marks his conversion, though Dickens implies it comes too late to undo the damage done to his children.