Bokelskere.no

The English landscape at its finest – such as I saw this morning – possesses a quality that the landscapes of other nations, however more superficially dramatic, inevitably fail to possess.

Jeg kan ikke en gang si at jeg begikk mine egne feil. Man må i sannhet spørre seg selv - hvilken verdighet er det i det?

Hva kan vi, når det kommer til stykket, få ut av alltid å se tilbake og klandre oss selv hvis livet ikke er blitt slik vi kunne ønske?...Hvilken hensikt har det å spekulere for meget på hva man kunne eller ikke kunne ha gjort for å styre den kurs livet slo inn på?

After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have whished?

And yet what precisely is this 'greatness'? Just where, or in what, does it lie? I am quite aware that it would take a far wiser head than mine to answer such a question, but if I were forced to hazard a guess, I would say that it is the very lack of obvious drama or spectacle that sets the beauty of our land apart. What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, of its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it. In comparison, the sorts of sights offered in such places as Africa and America, though undoubtedly very exciting, would, I am sure, strike the objective viewer as inferior on account of their unseemly demonstrativeness.