Purpose
Boccaccio claimed to have written the 106 biographies for the posterity of the women who were considered renowned, whether good or bad. He believed that recounting the deeds of certain women who may have been wicked would be offset by the exhortations to virtue by the deeds of good women other. He writes in his presentation of this combination of all types of women that hopefully it would encourage virtue and curb vice.
Read more about this topic: De Mulieribus Claris
Famous quotes containing the word purpose:
“For the purpose of knowledge, one must know how to use that inner current that draws us to a thing, and then the one that, after a time, draws us away from it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Rule of criticism: only attend to the shape, and the purpose will manifest itself.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of the watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.”
—Richard Dawkins (b. 1941)