➡️First part➡️Second part➡️Third part➡️ Fourth part➡️ Fifth part In the early 1940s, when Walt Disney’s daughters fell in love with the book “Mary Poppins”, their father promised them he would adapt the enchanting story into an enchanting movie.Disney spent the next 20 years trying to keep the promise made to his daughters and purchase the… Read More P.L. Travers & Walt Disney (final part)
No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. “Long Walk to Freedom” (1995),… Read More Nelson Mandela
Harry Browne (17 June 1933 – 2006) was an American politician, libertarian writer and public speaker, investment analyst and the author of more than twenty books and thousands of articles. In his 1995 book “Why Government Doesn’t Work” he wrote: “The politicians’ stirring phrases are meant to keep our eyes averted from the reality of… Read More War
English novelist and critic Samuel Butler was born in 1835 in Langar Rectory, in Nottinghamshire, England, into a long line of clerics, preordained to a career in church, to which he too, by his father’s wish and expectation was predestined. His relations with his father, Rev. Thomas Butler were difficult and antagonistic.He later wrote of… Read More Eclectic Samuel Butler
Sonnet 145 One of Shakespeare’s sonnets, number 145, has been claimed to refer to Anne Hathaway through the words “hate away”, which may be a pun (in Elizabethan pronunciation) on “Hathaway”. Also the following words, “And saved my life”, would have been indistinguishable in pronunciation from “Anne saved my life”. This sonnet, which is placed… Read More Shakespeare’s two Annes: 1. Anne Hathaway & Sonnet 145 (third part)
There are two documents that record the marriage of William Shakespeare and Anne but they are dissimilar. On 28 November 1582 a 40-pound bond was paid to the Bishop of Worcester to obtain William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway’s marriage license (see here). It was a sworn statement which confirmed that there were were no impediments… Read More The Confusion about Shakespeare’s Marriage
“By the sound of the children you knew the calendar day. By their screams you knew what evening it was. You knew it was very late in the year. October. The last day of October, with white bone masks and cut pumpkins and the smell of dropped candle wax[…]He had never liked October. Ever since… Read More “He had never liked October…”🎃
“If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; but if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.” ~ Don Marquis ~ American humourist, journalist, and author, born on 29 July 1878 “Se fai credere alle persone che stanno pensando, ti ameranno; ma se le fai davvero pensare, ti odieranno.” Image: Michelangelo –… Read More Don Marquis & Thinking
Lionel Johnson (see here) was the cousin and tutor of 20-year-old Lord Alfred Douglas, ‘Bosie’ for short. He lent him his copy of “The Portrait of Dorian Gray” and the young man claimed he had been so ‘passionately absorbed’ in the book, that he had devoured it, reading it ‘ fourteen times running’.The two of… Read More Johnson and Wilde (2) … and Bosie
✽ “We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.” Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (9 Nov 1934-1996) ✽ “The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in… Read More Carl Sagan
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