E. F. Benson
E. F. Benson
Edward Frederic "E. F." Bensonwas an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist and short story writer...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth24 July 1867
beauty ear educate enjoys fine gift harmonies lower palate pleasures quite reason senses subtle suppose taste
There is no reason to suppose that taste is in any way a lower sense than the other four; a fine palate is as much a gift as an eye that discerns beauty or an ear that appreciates and enjoys subtle harmonies of sound, and we are quite right to value the pleasures that all our senses give us and educate their perceptions.
bodily eats gourmet greedy health injuring man vice
The greedy man is he who habitually eats too much, knowing that he is injuring his bodily health thereby, and this is a vice to which not the gourmet but the gourmand is a slave.
affection boys felt forgotten golden life love man mature memory missed prizes retain romantic scarcely surrounded though wife
What man is there, surrounded though he be with the love of wife and children, who does not retain a memory of the romantic affection of boys for each other? Having felt it, he could scarcely have forgotten it, and if he never felt it, he missed one of the most golden of the prizes of youth, unrecapturable in mature life.
activity boys compulsory field games limbs natural physical swelling
To most boys with growing limbs and swelling sinews, physical activity is a natural instinct, and there is no need to drive them into the football field or the fives court: they go there because they like it, and there is no need to make games compulsory for them.
art elegant expressive music national queen quite regard resembling scarf soul victoria
Queen Victoria did not regard art, letters, or music as in any way springing from national character: they were something quite apart, elegant decorations resembling a scarf or a bracelet, and in no way expressive of the soul of the country.
apply days directly earlier failed grey intelligence learning possessed received regards sky teaching
All the teaching I had ever received had failed to make me apply such intelligence as I was possessed of, directly and vividly: there had never been any sunshine, as regards language, in the earlier grey days of learning, for the sky had always pelted with gerunds and optatives.
boasting cold deaf devoid eats five man merely might perpetual proud sad taste tells
Taste is one of the five senses, and the man who tells us with priggish pride that he does not care what he eats is merely boasting of his sad deficiency: he might as well be proud of being deaf or blind, or, owing to a perpetual cold in the head, of being devoid of the sense of smell.
certain considered feminine held meet nose processes rightly subjects victorian
Rightly or wrongly, the Victorian considered that there were certain subjects which were not meet for inter-sexual discussion, just as they held that certain processes of the feminine toilet, like the powdering of the nose and the application of lipstick to the mouth, were (if done at all) better done in private.
designed eclipse exception gentlemen literary popular previous wit
Young gentlemen with literary aspirations usually start a new university magazine, which for wit and pungency is designed to eclipse all such previous efforts, and I was no exception in the matter of this popular gambit.
alike brought common gift infallible life private public queen rare time utmost victoria woman
Queen Victoria was a woman of peerless common sense; her common sense, which is a rare gift at any time, amounted to genius. She had been brought up by her mother with the utmost simplicity, and she retained it to the end, and conducted her public and private life alike by that infallible guide.
lightning seen
Early impressions are like glimpses seen through the window by night when lightning is about.
devoted disgusted however mere prudence reduced romance sentiments sing
Romance is a bird that will not sing in every bush, and love-affairs, however devoted the sentiments that inspire them, are often so business-like in the prudence with which they are conducted, that romance is reduced to a mere croaking or a disgusted silence.
comparable dreams five haunting possess texture
Emotionally, I have no picture-book illustrated with memories of my first five years, but externally, I have impressions that possess a haunting vividness comparable only to the texture of dreams, when dreams are tumultuously alive.