Baron Arthur Ponsonby Ponsonby

“ If assistance to those who need it is the object of domestic service, it is striking to note that on the money basis, generally speaking, the wrong people are served. Who in the community most require and should specially have the help of servants? The old and infirm, the weak and ill, the very young and the hard-worked. Service under such conditions raises itself to the level of one of the highest occupations that can be imagined. But this is not our system. A man or woman may be ill, old or over-worked, without being able to get the assistance of a single soul. ”

“ The succeeding generation inherit their consequences in the shape of high taxation and the attempts to mend and reconstruct the dislocated national life. The horror has gone but the memory remains. To the succeeding generation they become episodes read of in the cold pages of history, and then at last they fade into mere names—a battle with a vaguely remembered date. ”

“ It was this spirit of Andersen’s, which to the end found beauty and joy in life, that makes his stories so fresh and eternal. For though Hans Andersen died a long time ago, he still lives in his writings. In nearly all countries they are known and read. For the truly great works of men are a gift to the whole world, and belong to all countries and to all time. I think these stories of Hans Andersen’s will probably live for ever, long after we are gone—perhaps so long as this world shall last. ”

“ Sitting there in your seven hundred carriages you are blind—in heart and soul and voice and walk—the blindest creatures in the world ... and you are charming to us who, like your footman, cannot see the label ‘Blind.’ The cut of your gown is perfect, the dressing of your hair the latest, the trimming of your hat later still; your tricks of speech the very thing; you droop your eyelids to the life, you have not too much powder; it is a lesson in grace to see you hold your parasol. ”

“ It is absurd to suppose that any section of the community, whatever pretensions they may have, can live as they like without affecting the lives and wellbeing of their fellow-men. Riches may set up a fence, make those inside it believe that they are living in a world apart and blind them to what is going on outside, but riches have no power to sever the moral and spiritual, as well as the invisible economic ties which bind every individual from his birth to his death with the whole of the rest of humanity. ”

“ The world is learning slowly to respect liberty of conscience, to admire sincerity, to detest intolerance, and to stamp out the spirit of persecution. We are beginning to understand that a really religious nature may exist apart from any profession of faith in any particular set of doctrines. And no sensible man now would condemn as wicked and irreligious a courageous thinker who fought throughout his career for freedom and independence of thought, and refused to alter his convictions to please others or even to save his own life. ”

“ No one cries out louder than a rich man if by any chance he loses part of his fortune. The reduction of his income from fifty to thirty, or from twenty to ten thousand a year is a catastrophe for which he unceasingly asks the sympathy and commiseration of his friends. The dismissal of the second footman is a hardship which requires courage to face, the sale of a corner of the estate is the sign of ruin! He stands in striking contrast to those who, having to face genuine poverty, often show fortitude and pluck in the face of bitter misfortunes. ”

“ A good many of us admit that riches do not bring happiness, and that they undoubtedly increase our responsibilities and make us less free, but we all fail to act up to our beliefs, and continue to wish for more money in order to have a larger house, more servants, more clothes—and thus, as Thoreau says, we become “the tools of our tools” and the slaves of our own helpers and servants; in fact, these things are a hindrance to our development. “Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.” This is one of Thoreau’s maxims. ”

“ Not the problem of how to become rich and how to invest money and make more money, that is the very obsession which ought to be dispelled, but the important question of how the rich spend their money, how they live, to what objects they devote their riches, and whether the vast accumulations are being disposed of to the greatest advantage. The connection between riches and poverty is capable of proof, that is to say, the maladministration of wealth by individuals can be shown to be closely linked to the disorganisation of labour which creates such evils as sweating and unemployment. ”

“ Under the Burgundian dukes the people of the Netherlands had managed to retain self-government, firmly clinging to their liberties, and at no price would they consent to become a province of Spain. No two peoples could have been more opposite in character—Spain quite behind the age, bigoted, superstitious, violently Catholic, cruel and aristocratic; and the Netherlands, full of life and activity, the rival of Italy in art and learning, ready to go ahead and adopt all the advanced and enlightened thought of the Reformation. ”

“ The deceptive process of the growth of riches—The relaxation of effort—The love of ease—The power of convention—The disadvantages of abundance—Surfeit—Difficulties in a rich man’s life—Waste of talent and capacity—England as a nation deeply infected with the belief in money.
There is no more misleading and deceptive process than the gradual growth of riches. As a man’s income increases, fresh obligations arise which have all the appearance of necessities, and in satisfying these a still further crop springs up, demands his attention, and occupies more of his time. ”

“ With a loud flourish of trumpets, he described himself as:
a doctor in perfected theology; a professor of pure and blameless wisdom; a philosopher known, approved, and honorifically acknowledged by the foremost academies of Europe; to none a stranger except to the barbarians and the vulgar; a waker of slumbering souls; a breaker of presumptuous and stubborn ignorance.
Both to the Sorbonne in Paris and the Wittenberg University he addressed himself in much more dignified and modest language. ”

“ The only crime is for man to act inhumanly to man. A change of heart is what Tolstoy pleads for, and every man and woman, he says, can do something to help, by example and having a purpose in life. “For life,” he says in a letter to his son, “is a place of service, and in that service one has to suffer at times a great deal that is hard to bear, but more often to experience a great deal of joy. But that joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal affairs.” ”

“ It is not unjust to condemn the appreciation of power such as this as a low form of pleasure not only for its pure selfishness, but because triumph in this connection implies control of other individuals and power to gain advantage at their cost. It is a form of self-glorification and exultation which simply means that to have wealth is to have the whip hand.
No one hopes for or expects complete repression of self, but in any corporate action for a common object, where there is a certain necessary self-repression, the satisfaction to the individual is unquestionably higher and purer. ”

“ By l’infâme he meant intolerance, bigotry, superstition, persecution, and all the hideous evils that blighted the true spirit of religion. It was l’infâme that enforced the doctrines of religion by fire, torture, and imprisonment, it was l’infâme that encouraged oppression and tyranny; it was l’infâme that was the barrier to liberty, progress, and enlightenment; and l’infâme was Voltaire’s lifelong enemy. He did as much as any one to combat this evil spirit. ”

“ For where is the justice that noblemen, goldsmiths, and usurers and those classes who either do nothing at all or in what they do are of no great service to the commonwealth, should live a genteel and splendid life in idleness or unproductive labour; whilst in the meantime the servant, the waggoner, the mechanic, and the peasant toiling almost longer and harder than the horse, in labour so necessary that no commonwealth could endure a year without it, lead a life so wretched that the condition of the horse seems more to be envied?... ”

“ Tolstoy, from seeing war, formed his very strong opinions against it. He became from that time one of the most passionate apostles of peace. He saw how much that is splendid is sometimes brought out in people who face the terrors of war, but, on the other hand, he saw its fearful uselessness, the waste of noble human beings, the suffering it causes everywhere, and the destruction, in some, of all human feeling. “It is not suffering and death that are terrible,” says Tolstoy, “but that which allows people to inflict suffering and death.” ”

“ Another example about which some doubt might be expressed is that of a man struggling with his family on an income well below the limit, unable to develop his capacities and lead a decently useful life because of the constant pinch of want. Will not a gift of money which secures him a competence without affluence, frees his energies for higher work, and liberates him from the sordid and painful trials of poverty, will not such a gift be an unqualified advantage to him, and will not, therefore, the giver of that money be an exception to the axiom that superfluous wealth cannot be well spent? ”

“ We should not have realized that beside his charming qualities, his great understanding of men, his gentleness and generosity, there lay heroic qualities of endurance, devotion, and courage. That he should not by nature have been an ascetic, despising amusements, good food, and fine clothes, and the lighter side of existence, but an aristocrat, easygoing, enjoying possessions and the beauty of life, and with some human weaknesses, only draws us more closely to him, for it makes us understand the struggles and difficulties he had to overcome in himself in order to do what he did. ”

“ I suggest that our religious revival may lead us to a new appreciation of the spirit of brotherhood—one of the great ideals of the democratic movement. Secondly, I suggest that our religious revival may take the form of a mission to the wealthy and prosperous. It is the curse of riches that they blur and even conceal altogether the heavenly vision. They tend to make pleasure the business of life. A man’s wealth is measured by the time and money that he can spend on amusement. ”

“ Mazzini, the man of ideas; Garibaldi, the man of action; and Cavour, the statesman. The man of action and the statesman are likely to get the most credit when the great decisive actions in the final stages of a successful revolution take place. But the work of the reformer, who in the earlier and more difficult times sees a spark of light in the darkness and proceeds patiently, with the whole weight of public opinion against him, to preach, educate, and prepare the ground, is certainly more difficult and in some ways perhaps even more admirable. ”

“ For if we take account of all the virtues with which money is mixed up, honesty, justice, charity, frugality, forethought, self-sacrifice, and of their correlative vices, it is a knowledge that goes near to cover the length and breadth of humanity.”
It is certainly true that the amazingly extensive nature of the subject might lead one away into perfectly relevant discussions of almost every field of human activity; and nothing renders argument so unsatisfactory and inconclusive as to have unlimited scope. ”

“ At a period when Europe was one broad battlefield, when wars were raging between races, between nations, and between religious sects, and hatred, misery, cruelty, and torture were filling the world with horror, and in a country that was suffering more than any other from these fearful evils, was born a man who, in spite of the darkness around him and in spite of the overwhelming forces which seemed to be subduing mankind, set to work to save civilization from ruin and to establish law and reason in the relations of nations. ”