Authors From England

": The marlyon, for a lady."

": The hobby, for a young man."

": The gos-hawk, for a yeoman."

": The tercel, for a poor man."

": The sparrow-hawk, for a priest."

": The musket, for a holy water clerk."

": The kesterei, for a knave or servant."

"The wassail is said to have originated from the words of Rowena, the daughter of Hengist; who, presenting a bowl of wine to Vortigern, the king of the Britons, said, wæs hæl or, health to you, my lord king..."

"I may just add, that in addition to the hand-guns, I meet with other instruments of like kind mentioned in the reign of Elizabeth, namely, demy hags, or hag butts. They shot with these engines not only at butts and other dead marks, but also at birds and beasts, using sometimes bullets and sometimes half shots; but in the beginning of the seventeenth century the word artillery was used in a much more extensive sense, and comprehended long-bows, cross-bows, slur-bows, and stone-bows; also scorpions, rams, and catapults, which, the writer tells us, were formerly used; he then names the fire-arms as follows, cannons, basilisks, culverins, jakers, faulcons, minions, fowlers, chambers, harguebusses, calivers, petronils, pistols, and dags. "This," says he, "is the artillerie which is nowe in the most estimation, and they are divided into great ordinance, and into shot or guns," which proves that the use of fire-arms had then in great measure superseded the practice of archery."

"The art of wrestling, which in the present day is chiefly confined to the lower classes of the people, was, however, highly esteemed by the ancients, and made a very considerable figure among the Olympic games. In the ages of chivalry, to wrestle well was accounted one of the accomplishments which a hero ought to possess. Wrestling is a kind of exercise that, from its nature, is likely to have been practiced by every nation, and especially by those the least civilised. It was probably well known in this country long before the introduction of foreign manners."

"What mathematics, therefore are expected to do for the advanced student at the university, Arithmetic, if taught demonstratively, is capable of doing for the children even of the humblest school. It furnishes training in reasoning, and particularly in deductive reasoning. It is a discipline in closeness and continuity of thought. It reveals the nature of fallacies, and refuses to avail itself of unverified assumptions. It is the one department of school-study in which the sceptical and inquisitive spirit has the most legitimate scope; in which authority goes for nothing. In other departments of instruction you have a right to ask for the scholar’s confidence, and to expect many things to be received on your testimony with the understanding that they will be explained and verified afterwards. But here you are justified in saying to your pupil “Believe nothing which you cannot understand. Take nothing for granted.” In short, the proper office of arithmetic is to serve as elementary 268 training in logic. All through your work as teachers you will bear in mind the fundamental difference between knowing and thinking; and will feel how much more important relatively to the health of the intellectual life the habit of thinking is than the power of knowing, or even facility of achieving visible results. But here this principle has special significance. It is by Arithmetic more than by any other subject in the school course that the art of thinking—consecutively, closely, logically—can be effectually taught."

"Pure mathematics is a collection of hypothetical, deductive theories, each consisting of a definite system of primitive, undefined, concepts or symbols and primitive, unproved, but self-consistent assumptions (commonly called axioms) together with their logically deducible consequences following by rigidly deductive processes without appeal to intuition."

"It is very possible for a teacher to be fluent in speech, earnest in manner, happy in his choice of illustration, and to be a very inefficient teacher, nevertheless. We are often apt to think it enough if we deliver a good lesson, and to forget that, after all, its value depends upon the degree in which it is really received and appropriated by the children. Now, in order to secure that what we teach shall really enter their minds, and be duly fixed and comprehended there, it is above all things necessary that we should be able to use effectively the important instrument of instruction to which our attention is now to be drawn."

"I have undertaken to say a few words to you on the "Art of Questioning". It is a subject of great importance to all of you who desire to become good teachers ; for, in truth, the success and efficiency of our teaching depend more on the skill and judgment with which we put questions than on any other single circumstance."

"Suppose then I want to give myself a little training in the art of reasoning; suppose I want to get out of the region of conjecture and probability, free myself from the difficult task of weighing evidence, and putting instances together to arrive at general propositions, and simply desire to know how to deal with my general propositions when I get them, and how to deduce right inferences from them; it is clear that I shall obtain this sort of discipline best in those departments of thought in which the first principles are unquestionably true. For in all 59 our thinking, if we come to erroneous conclusions, we come to them either by accepting false premises to start with—in which case our reasoning, however good, will not save us from error; or by reasoning badly, in which case the data we start from may be perfectly sound, and yet our conclusions may be false. But in the mathematical or pure sciences,—geometry, arithmetic, algebra, trigonometry, the calculus of variations or of curves,—we know at least that there is not, and cannot be, error in our first principles, and we may therefore fasten our whole attention upon the processes. As mere exercises in logic, therefore, these sciences, based as they all are on primary truths relating to space and number, have always been supposed to furnish the most exact discipline. When Plato wrote over the portal of his school. “Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here,” he did not mean that questions relating to lines and surfaces would be discussed by his disciples. On the contrary, the topics to which he directed their attention were some of the deepest problems,—social, political, moral,—on which the mind could exercise itself. Plato and his followers tried to think out together conclusions respecting the being, the duty, and the destiny of man, and the relation in which he stood to the gods and to the unseen world. What had geometry to do with these things? Simply this: That a man whose mind has not undergone a rigorous training in systematic thinking, and in the art of drawing legitimate inferences from premises, was unfitted to enter on the discussion of these high topics; and that the sort of logical discipline which he needed was most likely to be obtained from geometry—the only mathematical science which in Plato’s time had been formulated and reduced to a system. And we in this country [England] have long acted on the same principle. Our future lawyers, clergy, and statesmen are expected at the University to learn a good deal about curves, and angles, and numbers and proportions; not because these subjects have the smallest relation to the needs of their lives, but because in the very act of learning them they are likely to acquire that habit of steadfast and accurate thinking, which is indispensable to success in all the pursuits of life."

"We are so accustomed to hear arithmetic spoken of as one of the three fundamental ingredients in all schemes of instruction, that it seems like inquiring too curiously to ask why this should be. Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic—these three are assumed to be of co-ordinate rank. Are they indeed co-ordinate, and if so on what grounds? In this modern “trivium” the art of reading is put first. Well, there is no doubt as to its right to the foremost place. For reading is the instrument of all our acquisition. It is indispensable. There is not an hour in our lives in which it does not make a great difference to us whether we can read or not. And the art of Writing, too; that is the instrument of all communication, and it becomes, in one form or other, useful to us every day. But Counting—doing sums,—how often in life does this accomplishment come into exercise? Beyond the simplest additions, and the power to check the items of a bill, the arithmetical knowledge required of any well-informed person in private life is very limited. For all practical purposes, whatever I may have learned at school of fractions, or proportion, or decimals, is, unless I happen to be in business, far less available to me in life than a knowledge, say, of history of my own country, or the elementary truths of physics. The truth is, that regarded as practical arts, reading, writing, and arithmetic have no right to be classed together as co-ordinate elements of education; for the last of these is considerably less useful to the average man or woman not only than the other two, but than 267 many others that might be named. But reading, writing, and such mathematical or logical exercise as may be gained in connection with the manifestation of numbers, have a right to constitute the primary elements of instruction. And I believe that arithmetic, if it deserves the high place that it conventionally holds in our educational system, deserves it mainly on the ground that it is to be treated as a logical exercise. It is the only branch of mathematics which has found its way into primary and early education; other departments of pure science being reserved for what is called higher or university instruction. But all the arguments in favor of teaching algebra and trigonometry to advanced students, apply equally to the teaching of the principles or theory of arithmetic to schoolboys. It is calculated to do for them exactly the same kind of service, to educate one side of their minds, to bring into play one set of faculties which cannot be so severely or properly exercised in any other department of learning. In short, relatively to the needs of a beginner, Arithmetic, as a science, is just as valuable—it is certainly quite as intelligible—as the higher mathematics to a university student."

"The great Inventor is one who has walked forth upon the industrial world, not from universities, but from hovels; not as clad in silks and decked with honors, but as clad in fustian and grimed with soot and oil."

"But the only person who was ever pleased to see him was Jack. She realized that Itch was a little different, but she was happy to tolerate that. When Itch started to tell her about the chemical composition of her Twix or why her apple was turning brown, she would just flick his ear or poke him with a pencil. "Don't be boring, Itch, or I'll tell you more about Gossip Girl." This mention of Jack's favorite TV show was usually enough to stop Itch in his tracks."

"The school had been designated a "Science Academy" and attracted many sponsors: charities, eminent scientists, and a global oil company. The academy logo proclaimed: Together. Inspired. No one seemed quite sure what it meant."

"There should be a law against parents using sarcasm, thought Itch."

"…everyone called him Itch except his mother, whose bright idea it had been to name him Itchingham in the first place."

"Every kid should have a hobby—just not this one."

"Itchingham Lofte had caused explosions before. There had, in truth, been many bangs, flashes, and smells coming from his bedroom in the past. His multi-stained carpet and pockmarked walls were a testament to that. But there had been nothing like this explosion—it made even more of an imact than the small earthquake that had rippled under Cornwall a few months before."

"Maybe the body finds untapped reserves when it needs to; maybe the fear of dying makes it do extraordinary things."

"I'm sure 'I used it all, just to be on the safe side' is not the greatest piece of scientific advice out there!"

"Itch thought that Jay seemed to spend all of her time either eating her potato chips or picking her nose. Today she was managing both, bag balanced on lap, one hand for each task. Classy, he thought."

"Grace Glenacre forgot that she had been sick. Now she was furious. "How dare you? How dare you?!" she shouted. "I don't think I have ever sworn at a member if the staff before, but I'm going to now." She swore at him. "I have no idea what just happened in there, but twenty-seven sick kids and one sick teacher is not hysteria." Her voice was rising. "It's not hysteria, do you hear me!" Flowerdew stood up. "You're clearly hysterical," he said. "We'll talk later.""

"Ms. Glenacre was, it seemed, approaching her hundredth birthday and had never had a nice thought about anybody in her life."

"He turned and smiled at his class. "Morning boys, let's begin." His homeroom class had given up pointing out that they were more than fifty percent girls and just accepted that by "boys" he meant everyone. Mr. Watkins had come from an all-boys school in Edinburgh five years earlier and he was clearly not about to change the way he addressed his students."

"I am well aware that the path of the biographer is beset with pitfalls, and that, for him, suppressio veri is almost necessarily suggestio falsi — the least omission may distort the whole picture."

"No one who was not by nature a lover of logic, and an extreme precisian in the use of words and phrases, could have written the two "Alice" books."

"It always seems to me that one of the saddest things about the death of a literary man is the fact that the breaking-up of his collection of books almost invariably follows; the building up of a good library, the work of a lifetime, has been so much labour lost, so far as future generations are concerned. Talent, yes, and genius too, are displayed not only in writing books but also in buying them, and it is a pity that the ruthless hammer of the auctioneer should render so much energy and skill fruitless."

"He tried also to encourage civilised warfare among earthworms, by supplying them with small pieces of pipe, with which they might fight if so disposed."

"To me history as taught at school was like all those memories of galleries, castles and historic monuments that I didn't have. There was the same sense that if there was only some matrix, some philosophical framework to which I could attach all these facts then they would all make sense and they would all stay with me. And then halfway through Marx's Wages, Prices and Profits I suddenly thought to myself, 'Fuck me! This shit is actually true.' ... Once you understood Marx all the apparent chaos of human existence resolved itself into a coherent and comprehensive pattern. People fought not because they differed about how to wear a shirt but because they represented economic classes whose interests conflicted. The Cavaliers were landed aristocrats and their allies who wanted to hang on to a way of life being superseded by Cromwell's merchant class. Slavery was abolished not out of some idea 'niceness' in the Northern states but because the industrial factory owners of Chicago and Detroit wanted the blacks to work in their factories, to be 'wage slaves' rather than actual slaves, though often the improvement in their physical conditions was marginal. The British Empire wasn't some project designed to bring enlightenment to ignorant savages, but rather a brutal and rapacious exploitation of peoples who were often more humane than us. You can imagine, armed with this philosophy, how full of myself I now became. Even when I hadn't had the secret of human history in my grasp I had been a mouthy little bastard in class. Now I was unstoppable."

"The comedian Alexei Sayle's 24 July 2014 interview on BBC Radio Two [with Jeremy Vine] was a strong example of the demonisation of those expressing concern at antisemitism: in this case, directed against Emma Barnett of The Daily Telegraph who had written a heartfelt article expressing her sincere fears. Sayle and Barnett [also interviewed by Vine] are both Jewish. Sayle called Barnett a "pro-Israel propagandist" who was using antisemitism "to discredit the entire Palestinian cause." After interventions he did acknowledge "there are idiots out there who will be antisemitic," before then saying "I hate Jihadists ... Muslim fundamentalism ... Israeli fundamentalism. And that's what Emma Barnett is supporting ... the murder of children. The murder of women. That's what she’s supporting. From a fascist, Zionist ideology. And that’s what this article is. It's just propaganda." Barnett ended by telling Sayle to get a lawyer and thanked him "for proving my exact point.""

"[On his early "comic persona of an angry man in a too tight suit"] I do feel very proud of that, as we did banish racism and sexism from light entertainment."

"[On Jeremy Corbyn] It is extraordinary. It is an amazing thing to have someone leading a major party who is personally a decent person. I know him a bit as we are both patrons of Palestinian solidarity campaigns. I have known him over the years and the forces that have coalesced around Jeremy are forces of good."

"[On Jeremy Corbyn] I'm very excited by Jeremy's rise [...] Although you can see all the forces of evil and their lies being deployed against him. People say he's brought 1970s-style socialism back, but those left-wingers were dicks. I was never very keen on Tony Benn, a pompous, self-important man. And Derek Hatton and Eric Heffer – awful, vile people. Jeremy is nothing like them. He's ascetic and morally incorruptible. The propaganda that's thrown against him is disgraceful. Until he appeared, you had to vote for one kind of Oxbridge twat or another, people who all go to the same dinner parties, people like the Ed Ballses and George Osbornes. Jeremy has shown that, within a democratic tradition, other things are possible."

"Israel is the Jimmy Saville of nation states."

"I had devoted too much of my life to this utterly irrational game. I would chuck the whole thing and take to Strindberg for amusement."

"It is both a pointless and a churlish thing to praise the old days at the expense of the new, though there are a number of things a man might reasonably have preferred to commercial television and the hydrogen bomb."

"Cricket is no excuse for ignorance."

"No other country has lived with so complicated a past so equably, assimilating everything that has happened to it, obliterating naught, so that not even the intricate histories of European states have produced such a rich pattern as that bequeathed by the Mauryas, the Ashokas, the Pahlavas, the Guptas, the Chalykyas, the Hoysalas, the Pandyas, the Cholas, the Mughals, and the British - to identify a few of the people that have shaped India's inheritance. " "Religion, flourishes here as it does nowhere else. Other lands may surrender themselves totally to a particular faith, but in India most creeds are deeply rooted and acknowledged fervently. Virtually the whole population practices some form of devotion: the Indian without the slightest feeling for the divine, without a spiritual dimension to his life, is exceedingly rare." Incomparable and inimitable she is, India is also our great paradigm."

"I first fell under the spell of cricket, as every other small boy will have done, by batting and bowling on the nearest available space the moment I got home from school."

"All, then, are agreed on the pressing nature of this problem, all are bent on its solution, and though it would doubtless be quite Utopian to expect a similar agreement as to the value of any remedy that may be proposed, it is at least of immense importance that, on a subject thus universally regarded as of supreme importance, we have such a consensus of opinion at the outset. This will be the more remarkable and the more hopeful sign when it is shown, as I believe will be conclusively shown in this work, that the answer to this, one of the most pressing questions of the day, makes of comparatively easy solution many other problems which have hitherto taxed the ingenuity of the greatest thinkers and reformers of our time. Yes, the key to the problem how to restore the people to the land — that beautiful land of ours, with its canopy of sky, the air that blows upon it, the sun that warms it, the rain and dew that moisten it — the very embodiment of Divine love for man — is indeed a Master-Key, for it is the key to a portal through which, even when scarce ajar, will be seen to pour a flood of light on the problems of intemperance, of excessive toil, of restless anxiety, of grinding poverty — the true limits of Governmental interference, ay, and even the relations of man to the Supreme Power."

"Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier responded to social conditions which were, in many respects, worse than our own by detaching themselves from immediate action to devote thousands of hours to their urban utopias. But detachment is not necessarily escapism; for the three planners believed that before they could take effective action they had to stage a strategic withdrawal into their own minds. They wanted to escape from the inevitable limitations of short-term solutions devised for particular cities. Instead, they tried to consider the urban problem as a whole. They wanted to comprehend the logic of the twentieth-century city, its inherent structure, and its most efficient form. They attempted to look beyond the distortions that an inhumane social order had imposed upon the cities of their time, and to envision a city based on social justice and equality."

"Whatever may have been the causes which have operated in the past, and are operating now, to draw the people into the cities, those causes may all be summed up as "attractions "; and it is obvious, therefore, that no remedy can possibly be effective which will not present to the people, or at least to considerable portions of them, greater "attractions " than our cities now possess, so that the force of the old "attractions" shall be overcome by the force of new "attractions" which are to be created. Each city may be regarded as a magnet, each person as a needle; and, so viewed, it is at once seen that nothing short of the discovery of a method for constructing magnets of yet greater power than our cities possess can be effective for redistributing the population in a spontaneous and healthy manner."

"In these days of strong party feeling and of keenly-contested social and religious issues, it might perhaps be thought difficult to find a single question having a vital bearing upon national life and well-being on which all persons, no matter of what political party, or of what shade of sociological opinion, would be found to be fully and entirely agreed. … Religious and political questions too often divide us into hostile camps; and so, in the very realms where calm, dispassionate thought and pure emotions are the essentials of all advance towards right beliefs and sound principles of action, the din of battle and the struggles of contending hosts are more forcibly suggested to the onlooker than the really sincere love of truth and love of country which, one may yet be sure, animate nearly all breasts. There is, however, a question in regard to which one can scarcely find any difference of opinion. It is well- nigh universally agreed by men of all parties, not only in England, but all over Europe and America and our colonies, that it is deeply to be deplored that the people should continue to stream into the already over-crowded cities, and should thus further deplete the country districts."

"Glory glory alleluia I'm the luckiest of females For I've danced with a man Who's danced with a girl Who's danced with the Prince of Wales."

"A gentleman is a man who never hurts anybody else unintentionally."