Excerpt From Life Of Sir Stamford Raffles II

Among the men who have established the political and commercial power of this country in the seas of India and China, no one would deny a foremost place to Stamford Raffles. This silent acquiescence is the tribute paid by national gratitude to the greatness of a name, when the precise nature of the man's work has been consigned to oblivion, or perhaps never appreciated. But the work in this case was an achievement well worth description for its own value, and not less noteworthy because accomplished by a humble individual in the teeth of personal prejudice and official opposition. Raffles owed nothing to favour or fortune; he was the architect of his own position and reputation; while the breadth of his views and the boldness of his deeds often brought him the censure of his narrow-minded and faint-hearted superiors. But the difficulties and malice which nearly crushed him during life enhance his posthumous fame, and to him will ever be given the chief, if not the sole, credit of instituting the measures which permanently assured our hold on the sea route to the Far East.

Excerpt From Life Of Sir Stamford Raffles - Clouds and Death


Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles, to give him his full name, was the only son of Benjamin Raffles, who at the time of his famous son's birth, was captain of a merchant vessel trading between London and the West Indies.

Thus closed suddenly, and under the shadow of ill-health, pecuniary losses, and personal disappointment, the career of Sir Stamford Raffles. In years he had only just entered the period of middle life, and the work he had performed, as well as the experience he had gained, would have entitled him to take a further prominent part in the affairs of the East. Had his life been prolonged, there can be little doubt that he would have won fresh fame as a statesman on the floor of the House of Commons, or as an administrator in some new station beyond the seas. He had done enough, however, in his brief, and almost meteroic career, to obtain a place among the few great intellects and brave spirits that have pointed out for this country the path to empire in Southern Asia. Opposition, prejudice, aclumny during his lifetime and since his death, forgetfulness, and the haste which prevents our realising that our Empire came to us by inheritance from our forefathers, have not undone his work or diminished his reputation.

What was his work? Let the reader throw back his mind and consider all that Raffles had done, written, and inspired in the twenty-one years between the day on which he left the home-country, a young man, serious but hopeful, half-educated, he said in his modesty, but employing his time on ship-board in learning Malay, resolute to succeed by his own merit, but still more resolute to promote the interests of England -- and that early summer morning when his wife found him dead by the foot of the stairs at Highwood. His rise in the official service of the Company was extraordinarily rapid.

The marvel is that his detractors were so few; and great must have been the merit, subtle must have been the charm of manner, that at that period disarmed the enmity of the privileged ranks of the services and made so many of them his friends and admirers. His success, the resolution with which he carried his own views and policy into effect, were the more remarkable, because he never put on the hollow aspect of humility, so often used as a screen for ambition.

Such was the spirit in which he accomplished his life's mission. Sanguine in temperament, quick in his judgment, fixed in his resolutions, courageous in the execution of his plans, and undaunted in the face of difficulty, Raffles revealed on all critical occasions those qualities which are essential to the man of action, whether he be a statesman or a soldier.

The founding of Singapore was a great achievement -- great by reason of the method and the attendant conditions of its accomplishment. It was also a definite and concrete performance which everyone can see and understand. But, after all, this single act was not the real claim of Stamford Raffles to rank in the front group of English statesmen.

We may well ask ourselves in conclusion, whether in these days of checks and counter-checks upon individual initiative, when democratic institutions and interdependent councils combine with the telegraph to render it difficult to fasten responsibility on any one short of some ill-defined central authority, it is possible for such men as Stamford Raffles to obtain and to turn to account the opportunities that fall to their lot for the national aggrandisement. And if the individual statesman and soldier cannot obtain the chance, how is this Empire to be carried on, how are the triumphs of the past to be repeated in the future history of the world? With, however, the example and career fresh in our minds of this great man, this buoyant English statesman, who would have said, in the words of Shakespeare, "Come the three corners of the world in arms, and we shall shock them," doubt and fear would be out of place. Not of such as Raffles was Tennyson's mind full when he wrote the lines --

"Pray God our greatness may not fail
Through craven fears of being great."

Excerpt From Life Of Sir Stamford Raffles I

Excerpt From Life Of Sir Stamford Raffles - Clouds and Death

Raffles had never been physically a strong man, and the little strength he possessed had been so sapped by the sustained and indefatigable labours which he undertook in the course of his public duty, that it is not surprising to find that his health was bad, and a constant source of anxiety to his relatives after his final return in 1824. He had never complained at that time of the effect of that climate which proved fatal to his first wife, his children, and his best friends -- one after another; but, none the less, it told its tale on him. It was not merely in repeated attacks of illness that this was shown, but in the difficulty of writing. His hand became cramped, and he suffered from pains in the head. His active and comprehensive mind was full of great schemes, but he had not the physical strength to carry them out.

There is no doubt that Sir Stamford Raffles was a man of a delicate and sensitive mind, as well as of a precarious constitution.

The story of the last eighteen months of the life of Sir Stamford Raffles is a sad one; and there has seldom, if ever, been a case of a man, who had done so much for his country, passing away under such a cloud of varied misfortunes as befell him, without a contributory act of his own. His courage and eagle spirit would no doubt have enabled him to bear up under these trials, and to have triumphed, as he had done before, over all opponents; but successive attacks, premonitory of the malady that killed him, sapped his vigour, and exhausted, with each fresh effort, the remaining powers of his body.

The following extracts from his correspondence with Dr Raffles will show the reader how much he suffered during the last year of his life. On the 24th May 1825, he wrote: "Thank God I can return a tolerably satisfactory answer to your kind inquiry by saying, that though still rather weak and nervous, I am again getting about. My attack was sudden and unexpected, but fortunately was not apoplectic, as was at first feared. I was inanimate for about an hour, but on being bled, got better, and have had no return"; and again on 6th June, he wrote:"This last attack has so shaken my confidence and nerves, that I have hardly spirit at the present moment to enter upon public life, and prudence dictates the necessity of my keeping as quiet as I can until I completely re-establish my health." On the 10th Novemeber in the same year, he wrote:"I have been confined to my bed the whole of the day with one of my most violent headaches", and on the 7th February 1826 he said,"I have, upon the whole, very much improved in my general health than I have enjoyed since my return to England... I have, however, had, and still have, a good many annoyances and inquietudes, which have occasionally disturbed my peace of mind, owing to the misconduct and distresses of friends; but I hope these will soon be over."

The Gentleman's Magazine, for July 1826, gives the following particulars of Sir Stamford's death, which occurred early in the morning of the 5th of that month, the day before his forty-fifth birthday,"He had passed the preceding day in the bosom of his family, and excepting a bilious attack under which he had laboured for some days, there was ntohing in his appearance to create the least apprehension that the fatal hour was so near. Sir Stamford had retired to rest on the Tuesday evening (4th July) between ten and eleven o'clock, his usual hour when in the country. On the following morning at 5 0'clock, it being discovered that he had left his room before the time at which he generally rose, 6 0'clock, Lady Raffles immediately rose, and found him lying at the bottom of a flight of stairs in a state of complete insensibility. Medical aid was promptly procured, and every means resorted to, to restore animation, but the vital spark had fled. The body was opened, under the direction of Sir Everard Home, the same day, who pronounced his death to have been caused by an apoplectic attack, beyond the control of all human power. It was likewise apparent that the sufferings of the decesased must, for some time past, have been most intense." In the course of an appreciative notice the writer concludes as follows:" Considered as a whole, the character of the late Sir T. Stamford Raffles displays little, if anything, to censure, and much to applaud. His name will live in British History, not among warriors, but among the benefactors of mankind, as a philanthropist and statesman of the very first eminence."

Quotation About Reading V

The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man:
nothing else that he builds ever lasts monuments fall; nations perish;
civilization grow old and die out; new races build others.
But in the world of books are volumes that have seen
this happen again and again and yet live on.
Still young, still as fresh as the day they were written,
still telling men's hearts, of the hearts of men centuries dead.
~ Clarence Day



There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away,
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry.
~ Emily Dickinson


If I read a book that impresses me,
I have to take myself firmly in hand,
before I mix with other people;
otherwise they would think my
mind rather queer. ~ Anne Frank


The greatest gift is the passion for reading.
It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites,
it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind.
It is a moral illumination. ~ Elizabeth Hardwick


Never judge a book by its movie. ~ J. W. Eagan

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate's loot on Treasure Island. ~ Walt Disney

It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.
~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle


What's a book? Everything or nothing. The eye that sees it all. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson


A book is a fragile creature. It suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements, clumsy hands. ~ Umberto Eco


Don't join the book burners. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower


When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes. ~ Desiderius Erasmus


Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. ~ Charles W. Eliot


The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests;
just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Be as careful of the books you read, as of the company you keep,
for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as the latter.
~ Paxton Hood


What a school thinks about its library is a measure of what it feels about education.
~ Harold Howe


The proper study of mankind is books. ~ Aldous Huxley

Quotation About Reading IV

I've traveled the world twice over,
Met the famous; saints and sinners,
Poets and artists, kings and queens,
Old stars and hopeful beginners,
I've been where no-one's been before,
Learned secrets from writers and cooks
All with one library ticket
To the wonderful world of books.



A good book is the best of friends, the same today and forever. ~ Martin Farquhar Tupper


My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine -- everybody drinks water. ~ Mark Twain

The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. ~ Mark Twain


The great American novel has not only already been written,
it has already been rejected. ~ Frank Dane


A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images. ~ Albert Camus


The closest we will ever come to an orderly universe is a good library. ~ Ashleigh Brilliant


I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. ~ Jorge Luis Borges


When we read a story, we inhabit it.
The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.
What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story.
And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own. ~ John Berger


All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality -- the story of escape.
It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape. ~ Arthur Christopher Benson


A truly great book should be read in youth,
again in maturity and once more in old age,
as a fine building should be seen by morning light,
at noon and by moonlight.
~ Robertson Davies


The way a book is read- which is to say,
the qualities a reader brings to a book-
can have as much to do with its worth
as anything the author puts into it. ~ Norman Cousins


The book salesman should be honored
because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very
books we need most and neglect most. ~ Frank Crane


It was clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other
way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of
their habitat, breeding and multiplying and clearly lacking any strong
hand to keep them down. ~ Agatha Christie

Quotation About Books III

We get no good
By being ungenerous, even to a book,
And calculating profits,
-- so much help
By so much reading. it is rather when
We gloriously forget ourselves and plunge
Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound,
Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth --
'T is then we get the right good from a book.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning


Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment,
but in which each thought is of unusual daring;
such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be
entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution --
such call I good books.
~ Henry David Thoreau



The Brahmins say that in their books there are many
predictions of times in which it will rain.
But press those books as strongly as you can,
you can not get out of them a drop of water.
So you can not get out of all the books that contain
the best precepts the smallest good deed.
~ Count Leo Tolstoy


The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out.
Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it,
whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects
of his inner self that are opened by the text,
that road cut through the interior jungle forever
closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement
of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming,
whereas the copier submits it to command.
~ Walter Benjamin


A conventional good read is usually a bad read,
a relaxing bath in what we know already.
A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we,
the readers, become conspirators.
~ Malcolm Bradbury


Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted;
nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed,
and some few to be chewed and digested:
that is, some books are to be read only in parts,
others to be read, but not curiously, and some few
to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
~ Francis Bacon


Surviving and thriving as a professional today demands
two new approaches to the written word.
First, it requires a new approach to orchestrating information,
by skillfully choosing what to read and what to ignore.
Second, it requires a new approach to integrating information, by
reading faster and with greater comprehension.
~ Jimmy Calano


Readers may be divided into four classes:
1.) Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in
nearly the same state, only a little dirtied.
2.) Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get
through a book for the sake of getting through the time.
3.) Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read.
4.) Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by
what they read, and enable others to profit by it also.
~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge


There are books so alive that you're always afraid that
while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed,
has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too,
and like a river moved on and moved away.
No one has stepped twice into the same river.
But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?
~ Marina Tsvetaeva


What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while...
What really knocks me out is a book that,
when you're all done reading it,
you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours
and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.
That doesn't happen much, though.
~ J. D. Salinger


To use books rightly, is to go to them for help;
to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail;
to be led by them into wider sight and purer conception than our own,
and to receive from them the united sentence of the judges
and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinions.
~ John Ruskin


The real risks for any artist are taken in pushing the work
to the limits of what is possible, in the attempt to increase the sum
of what it is possible to think. Books become good when they
go to this edge and risk falling over it --when they endanger
the artist by reason of what he has, or has not, artistically dared.
~ Salman Rushdie

Quotation About Books II

A good book is the purest essence of a human soul. ~ Thomas Carlyle





Books, books, books had found the secret of a garret-room
piled high with cases in my father's name;
Piled high, packed large, --where, creeping in and out
among the giant fossils of my past, like some small nimble mouse
between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there
at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats
of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first.
And how I felt it beat under my pillow, in the morning's dark.
An hour before the sun would let me read!
My books!
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning



A book is good company.
It is full of conversation without loquacity.
It comes to your longing with full instruction,
but pursues you never.
~ Henry Ward Beecher


That is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed in profit. ~ Amos Bronson Alcott


She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain. ~ Louisa May Alcott



When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story.
And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own. ~ John Berger


There is no past, so long as book shall live! ~Edward Bulwer-Lytton



There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. ~ Joseph Brodsky


Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear. ~ E.S. Barrett


Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends. ~ Dawn Adams


I used to walk to school with my nose buried in a book. ~ Coolio


I often feel sorry for people who don't read good books; they are missing a chance to lead an extra life. ~ Scott Corbett


The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them. ~ Samuel Butler


In books lies the soul of the whole past time. ~ Thomas Carlyle


All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been -- it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of Books. ~ Thomas Carlyle


The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self activity. ~ Thomas Carlyle


Books are standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors, that they are ready to repeat their lesson as often as we please. ~ Oswald Chambers


After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books. ~ Thomas Carlyle


Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules,
without words or anger, without bread or money.
If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them,
they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold;
if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you.
~ Richard De Bury


He that loves a book will never want a faithful friend,
a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter.
By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently
divert and pleasantly entertain himself,
as in all weathers, as in all fortunes. ~ Barrow

Quotation About Books

People die, but books never die.


Beware of the man of one book. ~ Thomas Aquinas


There is no friend as loyal as a book. ~ Ernest Hemingway


Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn. ~ Joseph Addison


A book is like a garden carried in the pocket. ~ Chinese proverb


Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind. ~ Robert Chambers


A good title is the title of a successful book. ~ Raymond Chandler


Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house. ~ Henry Ward Beecher


A room without books is like a body without a soul. ~ Marcus T. Cicero


Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a little book. ~ Thomas Kempis


The man who is fond of books is usually a man of lofty thought, and of elevated opinions. ~ Christopher Dawson


Books, I found, had the power to make time stand still, retreat or fly into the future. ~ Jim Bishop


The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency -- the belief that the here and now is all there is. ~ Allan Bloom


A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you. ~ Daniel J. Boorstin


Books are not men and yet they stay alive. ~ Stephen Vincent Benet


A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors. ~ Henry Ward Beecher


Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is, there reading makes it more. ~ John Harington

Quotation About Reading III

Learning to read has been reduced to a process of mastering
a series of narrow, specific, hierarchical skills.
Where armed-forces recruits learn the components of a rifle
or the intricacies of close order drill "by the numbers,"
recruits to reading learn its mechanics sound
by sound and word by word.
~ Jacquelyn Gross


It is no more necessary that a man should remember the different
dinners and suppers which have made him healthy, than the different
books which have made him wise. Let us see the results of good food
in a strong body, and the results of great reading in a full and powerful mind.
~ Sydney Smith


Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. ~ Richard Steele


Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; they are the life, the soul of reading. ~ Laurence Sterne


The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. ~ Alvin Toffler


If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson


The successful Accelerated Reader is able to read larger than normal "blocks" or "bites" of the printed page with each eye stop. He has accepted, without reservation, the philosophy that
the most important benefit of reading is the gaining of information, ideas, mental "picture" and entertainment -- not the fretting over words. He has come to the realization that words
in and of themselves are for the most part insignificant. ~ Wade E. Cutler


Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson


Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson


I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready,
and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves. ~ E. M. Forster


Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures. ~ Jessamyn West


The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one
on a rainy day who doesn't know how to read. ~ Benjamin Franklin


Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. ~ Virginia Woolf


Choose an author as you choose a friend. ~ Sir Christopher Wren


When I discovered libraries, it was like having Christmas every day. ~ Jean Fritz


I was born with the impression that what happened in books was much more reasonable, and interesting, and real, in some ways, than what happened in life. ~ Anne Tyler


No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance. ~ Atwood H. Townsend


Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading, an easy prey to sensations and cheap appeals. ~ G. M. Trevelyan

Quotation About Reading II

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry. ~ Gaston Bachelard


Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable. ~ Augustine Birrell


Force yourself to reflect on what you read, paragraph by paragraph. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge


Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers. ~ Steven Spielberg


People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading. ~ Logan Pearsall Smith


When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature.
If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young. ~ Maya Angelou


Read, read, read. Read everything - trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window. ~ William Faulkner


When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story.
And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own. ~ John Berger


It is well to read everything of something, and something of everything. ~ Lord Henry P. Brougham


There is creative reading as well as creative writing. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson


Children are made readers on the laps of their parents. ~ Emilie Buchwald


To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting. ~ Edmund Burke


Happy is he who has laid up in his youth, and held fast in all fortune, a genuine and passionate love of reading. ~ Rufus Choate


Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers. ~ William Cobbett


You are wise, witty and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading this sort of stuff. ~ Jim Critchfield


Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking. ~ Albert Einstein



Reading furnishes the mind only with materials for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. ~ John Locke


Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere. ~ Hazel Rochman

Quotation About Reading I

Read in order to live. ~ Gustave Flaubert


Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life. ~ Mortimer J. Adler


Learn as much by writing as by reading. ~ Lord Acton


Today a reader, tomorrow a leader. ~ W. Fusselman


Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. ~ Joseph Addison


I am a part of everything that I have read. ~ John Kieran


Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness. ~ Anthony Marcel


How can you dare teach a man to read until you've taught him everything else first? ~ George Bernard Shaw


Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing. ~ Harper Lee



Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare. ~ Harriet Martineau


Read as you taste fruit or savor wine, or enjoy friendship, love or life. ~ Holbrook Jackson


I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander. ~ Isaac Asimov


There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing. ~ Isaac Disraeli


Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. ~ Francis Bacon


People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading. ~ Logan Pearsall Smith


Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors. ~ Joseph Addison


You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. ~ Ray Bradbury


The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books. ~ Katherine Mansfield


It is well to read everything of something, and something of everything. ~ Lord Henry P. Brougham


I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction. ~ Aneurin Bevan


The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it's also full of fourth-rate readers. ~ Stan Barstow

Quotation About Books & Reading

Wear the old coat and buy the new book. ~ Austin Phelps


We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. ~ B. F. Skinner


A great book should leave you with many experiences and slightly exhausted at the end.
You should live several lives while reading it. ~ William Styron


Everything in the world exists to end up in a book. ~ Stephane Mallarme


Outside a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read. ~ Groucho Marx



Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.
~ Henry David Thoreau


One half who graduate from college never read another book.
~ Herbert True


To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you,
and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations--
such is a pleasure beyond compare. ~ Yosida Kenko


The books that help you most are those which make you think that most.
The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading;
but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of
thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.
~ Theodore Parker


It is not enough to simply teach children to read;
we have to give them something worth reading.
Something that will stretch their imaginations-
something that will help them make sense of their own lives
and encourage them to reach out toward people
whose lives are quite different from their own.
~ Katherine Paterson


Upon books the collective education of the race depends;
they are the sole instruments of registering,
perpetuating and transmitting thought.
~ Henry C. Rogers

Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what?
All you have to do is go to the library. ~ Jim Rohn


The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature,
to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt


All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.
~ John Ruskin


A library is thought in cold storage. ~ Herbert Samuel


The more that you read,
the more things you will know.
The more that you learn,
the more places you'll go.
~ Dr. Seuss

More Quotes

• Quotation About Reading IV
• Quotation About Books III
• Quotation About Books II
• Quotation About Books
• Quotation About Reading III
• Quotation About Reading II
• Quotation About Reading I

Self-Protrait (David Whyte)

Franciscan Missionaries of Mary (FMM), House of Prayer and Formation,no.49, Holland Road.

SELF-PORTRAIT
By David Whyte

It doesn't interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eye,
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living,
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.



Self-Protrait is a poem David Whyte(1955) wrote after looking in the mirror one morning -- 'something' was calling him to stand up, wake up, and be honest about what his life was needing him to be and do. The whole theme of Whyte's poem is authenticity. David whyte was born and raised in the north of England, studied marine zoology in Wales, and trained as a naturalist in the Galapagos Islands. He now lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and two children, and works full-time as a poet, reading and lecturing throughout the world. He is one of the few poets to bring his insights to bear on organizational life, working with corporations at home and abroad. He has published four volumes of poetry, and has also written two best-selling prose books.

The Road Not Taken

The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost (1874-1963)

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

"The Road Not Taken" is a poem by Robert Frost, published in 1916 in his collection Mountain Interval. It is the first poem in the volume, and the first poem Frost had printed in italics. The title is often misremembered as The Road Less Traveled, from the penultimate line: “I took the one less traveled by”.

In Silence (Thomas Merton)

In Silence
By Thomas Merton

Be still
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
To speak your

Name.
Listen
To the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
Are You? Whose
Silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
Are you (as these stones
Are quiet). Do not
Think of what you are
Still less of

What you may one day be.
Rather
Be what you are (but who?) be
The unthinkable one
You do not know.

O be still, while
You are still alive,
And all things live around you
Speaking (I do not hear)
To your own being,
Speaking by the Unknown
That is in you and in themselves.

"I will try, like them
To be my own silence:
And this is difficult. The whole
World is secretly on fire. The stones
Burn, even the stones
They burn me. How can a man be still or
Listen to all things burning? How can he dare
To sit with them when
All their silence
Is on Fire?"

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a Trappist Monk, poet and peace activist. He was one of the first Christian monks to take an active interest in the spiritual traditions of the East. He was especially drawn to Buddhism because of its profound understanding of the human mind, and its placing of spirituality in the recesses of the human heart, rather than in outer forms and rituals. Merton was not only a monk but also a prolific, bestselling author and a gifted poet. In this extraordinary poem "In Silence", Merton tells us that even the stones speak, that they know who we are, and that they will tell us if we can be still enough to hear them. The universe, then, is alive with an intelligence that mirrors the light of knowledge that lives in us. Not the information in our frontal lobes, but the intelligence of the heart's deep core. If we can be still enough -- an that if is everything -- Merton says we might hear the stones speak our own true Name.

In 1947, his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, was a surprise best-seller, and profoundly influenced the immediate postwar interest in monasticism and religion. In the sixties, he became one of the first authoritative Christian voices to take a serious interest in Eastern spirituality, especially Buddhism. He translated Buddhist poets, and in 1968 attended an interfaith meeting of monastic superiors in Bangkok. On that same journey, he met the Dalai Lama in India, and they recognized each other as kindred spirits. Tragically, Merton was electrocuted accidentally in his Bangkok hotel room, and died there.

Quotations About Change

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark; professionals built the Titanic.

Whoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected. Change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up and down.
The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it: all is one.
And yet everything comes in season. ~ Heraclitus/Heraklietos of Ephesos


There are three kinds of people: Those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who ask, "What happened?" ~ Casey Stengel


Concerning all acts of iniative and creation, there is one elementary truth- that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too. ~ W.H. Murray, The Story of Everest


You must be the change you wish to see in the world. ~ Mahatma Gandhi


The greatest revolution in our generation is that of human beings, who by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives. ~ Marilyn Ferguson


It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. ~Charles Darwin


The best way to predict the future is to create it. ~ Peter Drucker


The most powerful agent of growth and transformation is something much more basic than any technique: a change of heart. ~ John Welwood

Some people change when they see the light, others when they feel the heat. ~ Caroline Schoeder

It's best to make your peace with change, before it makes pieces of you. With the beginning of a great & compassionate love, comes the growth of one's heart, and with that, a profound inner change. The way to opening the mind is often first through the heart. And once is the mind & heart are open, so many things become possible. ~ Corey Irwin


To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. ~Henri Bergson


We know only two things about the future: It cannot be known, and it will be different from what exists now and from what we now expect. ~ Peter Drucker


The mind thinks That any change Is painful. The heart feels That any change Is powerful. ~ Sri Chinmoy


The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstacy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed. ~ I. Krishnamurti


If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain. ~ Maya Angelou


You want to change the world. The world wants to change you. You and the world Should stop thinking of changing each other. Just allow a third Person To do the needful. You know who I mean: God the only Doer. ~ Sri Chinmoy


We cannot discover new oceans until we have the courage to lose sight of the shore. ~ Muriel Chen


Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors. ~ African proverb


Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson


To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. ~ Henri Bergson


Learn wisdom from the ways of a seedling. A seedling which is never hardened off through stressful situations will never become a strong productive plant. ~ Stephen Sigmund

Quotes About Heroism

Hero - Mariah Carey (Cats Video)


A hero is a man who does what he can. ~ Romain Rolland


A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men. ~Plato


It is surmounting difficulties that makes heroes. ~ Louis Pasteur


By hero, we tend to mean a heightened man who, more than other men, possesses qualities of courage, loyalty, resourcefulness, charisma, above all, selflessness. He is an example of right behavior; the sort of man who risks his life to protect his society's values, sacrificing his personal needs for those of the community. ~ Paul Zweig


A hero is one who knows how to hang on one minute longer. ~ Novalis


A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


You cannot be a hero without being a coward. ~ George Bernard Shaw


The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else. ~ Umberto Eco


The hero is the man dedicated to the creation and / or defense of reality-conforming, life-promoting values. ~ Andrew Bernstein


Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes. ~Benjamin Disraeli


The most heroic word in all languages is revolution. ~ Eugene Debs


Self-trust is the essence of heroism. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson


To have no heroes is to have no aspiration, to live on the momentum of the past, to be thrown back upon routine, sensuality, and the narrow self. ~ Charles Horton Cooley


The world's battlefields have been in the heart chiefly; more heroism has been displayed in the household and the closet, than on the most memorable battlefields in history. ~ Henry Ward Beecher



The greatest height of heroism to which an individual, like a people, can attain is to know how to face ridicule. ~ Miguel de Unamuno



Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh, that is to say over fear: fear of poverty, of suffering, of calumny, of illness, of loneliness and of death. There is no real piety without heroism. Heroism is the dazzling and glorious con. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel


Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience. ~ Thomas Merton


Hero worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson