Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Louise Burfitt-Dons

Quote by Louise Burfitt-Dons

Work

The Missing Activist

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Louise Burfitt-Dons
Louise Burfitt-Dons

Louise Burfitt-Dons is an active social activist, born on October 22, 1953. She is known for her contributions to environmental protection and community development. more

You May Also Like

“People feeling strong at some stage of their life sometimes easily allow themselves to offend the weak, being more than sure they will stay unpunished for their behavior. But in due time, the reckoning comes for everything.”

Abuse QuotesNo Excuse For Abuse QuotesQuotes About AbuseQuotes About Offending OthersQuotes About Offending SomeoneQuotes About OffenseQuotes About Someone Abusing You
Book:Indigo Diaries: A Series of Novels
Create image

“The Englishmen in the Middle East divided into two classes. Class one, subtle and insinuating, caught the characteristics of the people about him, their speech, their conventions of thought, almost their manner. He directed men secretly, guiding them as he would. In such frictionless habit of influence his own nature lay hid, unnoticed. Class two, the John Bull of the books, became the more rampantly English the longer he was away from England. He invented an Old Country for himself, a home of all remembered virtues, so splendid in the distance that, on return, he often found reality a sad falling off and withdrew his muddle-headed self into fractious advocacy of the good old times. Abroad, through his armoured certainty, he was a rounded sample of our traits. He showed the complete Englishman. There was friction in his track, and his direction was less smooth than that of the intellectual type: yet his stout example cut wider swathe. Both sorts took the same direction in example, one vociferously, the other by implication. Each assumed the Englishman a chosen being, inimitable, and the copying him blasphemous or impertinent. In this conceit they urged on people the next best thing. God had not given it them to be English; a duty remained to be good of their type. Consequently we admired native custom; studied the language; wrote books about its architecture, folklore, and dying industries. Then one day, we woke up to find this chthonic spirit turned political, and shook our heads with sorrow over its ungrateful nationalism - truly the fine flower of our innocent efforts. The French, though they started with a similar doctrine of the Frenchman as the perfection of mankind (dogma amongst them, not secret instinct), went on, contrarily, to encourage their subjects to imitate them; since, even if they could never attain the true level, yet their virtue would be greater as they approached it. We looked upon imitation as a parody; they as a compliment.”

ColonialismAcculturationEnglish ColonistsFrench Colonists
Book:The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Create image