"Besant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... never acknowledged him, and, in a measure, he has been neglected by the public. There is a reason for everything, if we could only find it, and sometimes I seem to have a glimmering of light on this perplexing problem. Sir Walter Besant (Mr. Besant then) wrote in the 'Gentleman's Magazine' years ago a daring panegyric on Reade's work, giving him frankly a place among the very greatest. My heart glowed as I read, but I know now that it took courage of the rarer sort to express a judgment so unreserved ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... as a funny fellow, true enough, but his actual stature was not even faintly apprehended, and even after "Huckleberry Finn" he was still bracketed with such laborious farceurs as Artemus Ward. It was Sir Walter Besant, an Englishman, who first ventured to put him on his right shelf, along with Swift, Cervantes and Moliere. As for Poe and Whitman, the native recognition of their genius was so greatly conditioned by a characteristic horror of their immorality that it would be absurd to say that their ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... Malaviyuji, the Hon'ble Dr. Sapru Motilal Nehru Chintamani and others were present at the meeting. It was a wise step on the part of the Khilafat Committee to invite Hindus representing all shades of thought to give them the benefit of their advice. Mrs. Besant and Dr. Sapru strongly dissuaded the Mahomedans present from the policy of non-co-operation. The other Hindu speakers made non-committal speeches. Whilst the other Hindu speakers approved of the principle of non-co-operation ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... American public for their elocutionary defects. They have no speakers to compare with Wendell Phillips, George William Curtis, or Anna Dickinson, although John Bright is without peer among his countrymen, as is Mrs. Besant among the women. The women, as a general rule, are more fluent than ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... things to take into account when fixing the important date. If the bridegroom elect is not his own master a time must be chosen when he is sure to be at liberty. It was said of the late Sir Walter Besant {72} that he was so overwhelmed with business that he hardly had time to be married. The bride's father has also to be considered, and if any particular church dignitary is required to perform the ceremony his engagements will have to be taken ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... which was so long in coming, and came in full measure too late. Of the three letters to the Times, written in 1872, one was republished, with the permission of Mrs. Jefferies, in an appendix to Mr. Walter Besant's "Eulogy of Richard Jefferies." It finds its natural place in this volume with the other papers, which give so clear a picture of the life of all classes of the cultivators of the soil in the early seventies. The "True Tale of the Wiltshire ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... criticism that the future belongs. The subject- matter at the disposal of creation becomes every day more limited in extent and variety. Providence and Mr. Walter Besant have exhausted the obvious. If creation is to last at all, it can only do so on the condition of becoming far more critical than it is at present. The old roads and dusty highways have been traversed ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... seen such kinds of co-partnerships, for instance, in Beaumont and Fletcher; more recently in the beautiful French tales of Erckmann-Chatrian, and still later in the English novels of Besant ...
— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy
... sat down with the fear of nothing but German around us, we heard the sound of our own speech from the pleasantest English pair we had yet encountered; and the travelling English are pleasant; I will say it, who am said by Sir Walter Besant to be the only American who hates their nation. It was really an added pang to go, on their account, but the carriage was waiting at the door; the 'domestique' had already carried our baggage to the steam-tram ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Mr. BESANT'S Captain Cook, published in the MACMILLAN Series of English Men of Action. He discovered the Society Islands, whence, of course, are obtained our present supply of Society Papers. The natives of these Society ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... with an account of his literary requirements. "The fact is—I've read precious little. One don't get much of a chance, situated as I am. We have a library at business, and I've gone through that. Most Besant I've read, and a lot of Mrs. Braddon's and Rider Haggard and Marie Corelli—and, well—a Ouida or so. They're good stories, of course, and first-class writers, but they didn't seem to have much to do with me. But there's heaps of books one hears talked ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... from American papers. 'The Novelist' contains a serial. 'The Story-Teller' a single story—original. This department is always well sustained, and no expense is spared in getting good work. 'All Sorts and Conditions of Men' has just been running through the paper, Besant and Rice being favourite authors here. James Payne, B. L. Farjeon and R. E. Francillon are other contributors whose names come into my mind. Occasionally a colonial work is chosen, and the proprietors ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... sure, could never have put into the mouth of a "rudimentary" person like Huck, so vivid and graphic a description of a storm with its perfect reproduction of the impression caught by the "rudimentary" mind. "Writers of fiction," says Sir Walter Besant in speaking of this book, "will understand the difficulty of getting inside the brain of that boy, seeing things as he saw them, writing as he would have written, and acting as he would have acted; and presenting ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... once started in the way I have described was seen to be intensely interesting. Mrs. Besant almost immediately co-operated with Mr. Leadbeater in its further progress. Encouraged by the success with hydrogen, the two important gases, oxygen and nitrogen, were examined. They proved to be rather ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater
... dramatists is acknowledged to have fallen on Philip Massinger, commemorated in the next window. It was the first of the series to be inserted, and was unveiled by Sir Walter Besant in 1896.[24] The subject is taken from Massinger's fine play, "The Virgin Martyr," and represents an angel bearing flowers and fruits of Paradise from the martyr (St. Dorothea) to a sceptical lawyer who had asked for the token for his conviction. Below this central compartment ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... fictionists,—a word which is used in its well meant sense,—some have been chroniclers, like the late Sir Walter Besant and Joseph Knight, whose contributions of historical resume are of the utmost value. Others are mere "antiquarians" or, if you prefer, historians, as the author of "London Riverside Churches." Poets there have been, too, who have done their part in limning its charms, from Wordsworth's ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... in Bradlaugh, I bought both the Knowlton pamphlet and Mrs. Besant's population book. I found the physical details in scientific language so dull that I could not peruse them. By reading the argumentative passages I learned that somehow (I knew not how) children could be produced or not produced as desired; and in this stage of the matter it seemed to ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... But what are they compared with Astral Bodies? Of Useless Knowledge I have almost had enough, I really envy uninquiring noddies, I would not be a Chela if I could. I have a horror of the Esoterical. BESANT and OLCOTT may be wise and good, They seem to me pursuing the chimerical. Maddened by mysteries of "Precipitation," The Occult Dream and the Bacillus-Dance; We need Societies ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... the Maharaja of Darbhanga: secondly the movement started by Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda and adorned by the beautiful life and writings of Sister Nivedita (Miss Noble) and thirdly the Theosophical Society under the leadership of Mrs Besant. It is remarkable that Europeans, both men and women, have played a considerable part in this revival. All these organizations are influential: the two latter have done great service in defending and ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... as a source of mischievous and false Opinions. Case of The Woman Who Did. Sacredness of Marriage. Study of the Novel becomes an abuse if it leads to the Neglect of the Morning and Evening Newspapers. Sir Walter Besant on the Novel. None but the newest Novels ought to be read. Mr. W. D. Howells on this subject. Experience of the Lecturer as a Novelist. Gratifying letters from persons happily influenced by the Lecturer. Anecdotes. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... that moonshine-giant. As says the Saga, "even as Glam fell a cloud was driven from the moon, and Glam said, Exceedingly eager hast thou sought to meet me, Grettir, but no wonder will it be deemed, though thou gettest no good hap of me." Even so it proved lately, when I told my friend, Anne Besant, that Madame Blavatsky had admitted it was glamour. She reminded me of the power still left unexplained, to cast ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... back again for another purpose. If such a barn could be filled now, and its produce applied to the help of the poor and aged and injured of the village, we might get rid of that blot on our civilisation—the workhouse. Mr. Besant, in his late capital story, 'The Children of Gibeon,' most truly pointed out that it was custom which rendered all men indifferent to the sufferings of their fellow-creatures. In the old Roman days men were crucified ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... meeting Miss Anthony and I were invited to spend a week-end at the home of Mrs. Jacob Bright, that "Aunt Susan" might renew her acquaintance with Annie Besant. This visit is among my most vivid memories. Originally "Aunt Susan" had greatly admired Mrs. Besant, and had openly lamented the latter's concentration on theosophical interests—when, as Miss Anthony put it, "there are so many live problems here in this world." Now she could ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... pleases and delights me. I have not gone beyond the age when embarrassment is possible, but I have reached the age when I know how to conceal it. It is such a satisfaction to me to hear Sir Walter Besant, who is much more capable than I to judge of my work, deliver a judgment which is such a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the Hearth is available in many forms. The pleasantest is in 4 volumes issued by Chatto & Windus, with an Introduction by Sir Walter Besant. There is a remarkable shilling edition issued by Collins ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... on his miserable surroundings sufficiently to give an inkling as to what sort of man he was. On the walls were cheap pictures of Garibaldi, Engels, Dan Burns, and other labour leaders, while on the table lay one of Walter Besant's novels. He knew his Shakespeare, I was told, and had read history, sociology, and economics. And he ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... the walls was left. Mr. Bolckow, the present owner of Marton Hall, says: "The cottage was found destroyed when my uncle bought Marton in 1854, but we came across the foundations of it when the grounds were laid out." A granite vase has been erected on the spot. The pump which Besant says still exists, and was made by Cook's father to supply his house with water, was "put there after Cook's time," ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... greater proportion of voluntary limitation. The exhaustive investigation of the Galton Laboratory of National Eugenics leaves little room for doubt that in England the decline in the birth-rate began about 1876-78, when the trial of Charles Bradlaugh and the Theosophist leader, Mrs. Annie Besant, on the charge of circulating "neo-Malthusian" literature, focused public attention on the possibility of birth control, and gradually brought a knowledge of the means of contraception within reach of many. In the United States statistics are lacking, but medical men and others in a position to ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... experiences of the previous birth. The moral influence of such a doctrine is rendered all but impossible by the fact that there is no consciousness (the true basis of moral continuity) to connect one birth with another. I know of no one but Mrs. Besant who claims to know what his previous, assumed birth was, and I have not yet met any one who believes her claim in this matter. There is no moral discipline for one in his being punished for a thing of which he has ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... something so slight as to result in a merely odd or whimsical inconsistency, to a discordancy of which the consequences may be inconvenient in the extreme. Of the more innocent kinds of heterogeneity I find a good example in Mrs. Annie Besant's autobiography. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... genius in his own person, was always ready to appreciate good poetical work that had no fame to recommend it. [Footnote: Since the above was written I have met with an address delivered by Mr. Walter Besant, the novelist, in which he recommends the continuous practice of versification as a discipline in the use of language most valuable ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Barham Jane Barlow Joel Barlow James Matthew Barrie Frederic Bastiat Charles Baudelaire Lord Beaconsfield Beaumarchais Francis Beaumont William Beckford Ludwig van Beethoven Jeremy Bentham George Berkeley Hector Berlioz Saint Bernard of Clairvaux Juliana Berners Walter Besant Henri Beyle ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... edition) (1424-1506). *Fortescue's Governance of England (Plummer's edition) (1460?). *Hall's Chronicle (1398-1509). Brougham's England under the House of Lancaster. Besant's Life of Sir Richard Whittington. Taine's English Literature. Rand's Chaucer's England. Stubbs's Constitutional History of England. Strickland's Queens of England (Margaret of Anjou). Reed's English History in Shakespeare. Gairdner's Houses of Lancaster ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... of Cook's Voyages, and many translations. The best Biography of Cook is that of Kitson, 1907. Besant's brief Life ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... of the material in this Chapter is derived from Milman's History of the Jews, W. Besant and E. H. Palmer's Jerusalem, and George Adam Smith's Historical Geography of the Holy Land, to which ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... seventies of last century a pamphlet entitled The Fruits of Philosophy was republished by Mrs. Annie Besant and Mr. Charles Bradlaugh, in their desire to mitigate the suffering of poor women who were overburdened by work and further weakened by frequent child-bearing. They resolved to face public obloquy and even legal ...
— Conception Control and Its Effects on the Individual and the Nation • Florence E. Barrett
... thought over heaps of things that I could do, and at last I've decided—sit down, and I'll tell you all about it! This is the comfiest chair. It's so nice getting to know you first, because you can help. Ages ago I read a story by Sir Walter Besant, Katherine Regina was the name, I think. I forget what it was about, and all about it, except that one character was a poor governess living in a dreary London 'Home,' knowing nobody, and having absolutely nowhere to go in her leisure hours, because of course she ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... is only the fire and in Europe the form. The nearest to what I mean was suggested in that very striking book Form and Colour, by Mr. March Philips. When I spoke of the idols of Asia, many moderns may well have murmured against such a description of the ideals of Buddha or Mrs. Besant. To which I can only reply that I do know a little about the ideals, and I think I prefer the idols. I have far more sympathy with the enthusiasm for a nice green or yellow idol, with nine arms and ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... love her" Robert Browning The Henchman John Green1eaf Whittier Lovely Mary Donnelly William Allingham Love in the Valley George Meredith Marian George Meredith Praise of My Lady William Morris Madonna Mia Algernon Charles Swinburne "Meet we no Angels, Pansie" Thomas Ashe To Daphne Walter Besant "Girl of the Red Mouth" Martin MacDermott The Daughter of Mendoza Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar "If She be made of White and Red" Herbert P. Horne The Lover's Song Edward Rowland Sill "When First I Saw Her" George Edward Woodberry ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... even yer Fancy Dress Balls, and yer lectures by ANNIE BESANT, All about Hastral Bodies and Hether, seems not always quite wot yer want To wile away time arter dinner. So thanks to that gent—six-foot-four!— Who fair cuts the record as ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... things, whereas they are only labels that are clapped quite indiscriminately on empty casks or full ones; and the contents of the casks may be sea-water or wine, and are really unknown to both mortal and divine mind, whatever these things are. Theosophists like Annie Besant, Spiritualists like Alfred Russel Wallace, Agnostics like Huxley and Ingersoll, are very noble and beautiful people. They are good neighbors and ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... also conducted experiments on plants in the same way. Pieces of vegetable matter were found to be capable of stimulation, fatigue, excitement, depression, poison. Mrs. Annie Besant, who witnessed some of these experiments in Calcutta, has written as follows regarding the experiments on plant life: "There is something rather pathetic in seeing the way in which the tiny spot of light which records the pulses ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... just as it was originally, that peccant passage. I am fully ready to prove also that, though Chairman of the London County Council for a period, and though he made a very clever address at one of Sir W. Besant's lectures, there is much yet—very much—he might learn from Sir W. Besant's writings on London. It isn't so easy to outshine all the experts—even for a clever peer who has been Prime Minister, though it is very, very easy to flatter Lord Rosebery, with a purpose or purposes, as did at least once ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... based upon a hypothetical identity of soul in different successive bodies—a hypothesis which can never be proved, and which contradicts the universal consciousness. Until that erratic Englishwoman, Mrs. Besant, appeared, no one claimed to possess the first intimation, through consciousness or memory, of a previous existence in another body. Ancient rishis and a few others were said by others to have possessed it. Strange, if such a re-incarnation were a fact, that none has ever been assured ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... the skill to define his thoughts sufficiently to write them down—then it would be time enough, in my view, to undertake what "An Oxford Lecturer" suggests. By the way, he highly recommends Mrs. Annie Besant's book, Thought Power: Its Control and Culture. He says that it treats the subject with scientific clearness, and gives a practical method of training the mind, I endorse the latter ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... to Sir Walter Besant's delightful sketch, there are any number of versions of the story of Cook's life and work. Let us assume that everyone knows how James Cook, son of a superior farm labourer in Yorkshire, at thirteen years of age apprenticed to a fishing village shopkeeper, ran away ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... pillars of the Moderate party at such a critical juncture proved to be an irreparable loss. When Mr. Gokhale's political testament was published, it was dismissed by the Extremists as a well-meant but quite obsolete document. The Congress found a new and strange Egeria in Mrs. Besant, who had thrown herself into Indian politics when, owing to circumstances[2] which had nothing to do with politics, the faith that many respectable Hindus had placed in her, on the strength of her theosophical teachings, as a vessel of spiritual election was rudely shaken. But ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol |
