"In action he was sometimes wanting in courage and in promptitude, but he never shrank from taking any risk on what he considered a matter of basic principle. He used to laugh at the epithet of “Honest John”, but he fully deserved it; with all his little weaknesses and his small and human vanities, he was emphatically a noble figure. He hated cruelty, he was humane, he was consistent. He might see the faults of the poor, but in heart and soul he was always with them. When I was talking to him once about the tragedies that lay behind the brilliant surface of aristocratic society, and suggested what material these things might give to a dramatist or novelist of genius, Morley almost impatiently replied that he took no interest in their rotten joys or their rotten sorrows; he was more interested in the poor wage-earner, who had to keep wife and children on scanty and uncertain resources. To sum him up; he failed, so far as he did fail, because he was a philosopher and not a bruiser."
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Academics from EnglandMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomEditors from EnglandChief Secretaries for IrelandSecretaries of State for India (United Kingdom)
Original Language: English
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Sources
T. P. O'Connor, Memories of an Old Parliamentarian, Volume I (1929), pp. 296–297
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Morley%2C_1st_Viscount_Morley_of_Blackburn
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John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn
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