"Their elaborate manners masked simple reactions. Like their mode of life their characters were essentially natural; spontaneous, unintrospective, brimming over with normal feelings, love of home and family, loyalty, conviviality, desire for fame, hero-worship, patriotism. And they showed their feelings too. Happy creatures! They lived before the days of the stiff upper lip and the inhibited public school Englishman. A manly tear stood in their eye at the story of a heroic deed... They were equally frank about their less elevated sentiments. Eighteenth century rationalism combined with rural common sense to make them robustly ready to face unedifying facts. And they declared their impressions with a brusque honesty, outstandingly characteristic of them."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Historians from EnglandLiterary criticsUniversity of Oxford facultyBiographers from EnglandUniversity of Oxford alumni
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
pp. 13-14
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lord_David_Cecil
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Lord David Cecil
Lord Edward Christian David Gascoyne-Cecil CH (9 April 1902 – 1 January 1986) was a British biographer, historian, and scholar. He held the style of "Lord" by courtesy, as a younger son of a marquess.
22 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Lord David Cecil →
Related Quotes
"England can best express her passionate will to peace by proposing something concrete to solve present difficulties. …"
"Let us announce to the League that we admit Germany's right to development and that we are prepared to concede someth…"
"That city Oxford] is one of the few supreme monuments of European history and civilization, the English equivalent of…"
"I cannot recall a time when stories and rhymes and pictures and tunes were not for me the chief source of interest an…"
"Poetry is usually concerned with what is universal and unchanging in human life; novels necessarily with much that is…"
"The Whig aristocracy was a unique product of English civilization. It was before all things a governing class. At a t…"
"Since life to them was so secure and so pleasant, the Whig aristocrats tended to take its fundamental values very muc…"
"Founded as their position was on landed property, the Whig aristocracy was never urban. They passed at least half the…"
"All who know him will agree that as a man he is characterized by his gay liveliness of mind, and his robust downright…"
"Comedy was implicit in the manner in which she [Jane Austen] told her story. Her irony, her delicate ruthless irony, …"