Extracts from Literature
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Extracts from Literature’
Magnus had just reasserted Norway’s authority over The Isles and Man, when he stumbled into a party of Normans harassing the King of Gwynedd.
In 1098, Magnus III ‘Barelegs’, King of Norway, boldly reasserted Norway’s authority over the Isles and Man, a realm of islands around Scotland’s coastline which the Vikings had dominated for over two centuries. Pleased with his progress, Magnus sailed on south to Anglesey, where he stumbled upon a party of Normans celebrating victory over Gruffudd ap Cynan, King of Gwynedd.
Barely a generation after Harald Hardrada narrowly missed out on taking the English crown, his grandson Magnus re-asserted Norway’s authority over The Isles and Man.
Vikings increasingly dominated the northern coasts of the British Isles after King Harald Fairhair united Norway’s petty kingdoms in 872, at the Battle of Hafrsfjord. After Godred Crovan, lord of The Isles and Man, died in 1095 his successor Ingimundr was assassinated, and King Magnus III ‘Barelegs’, who had chosen him, was not pleased. In 1098, Magnus set out from Trondheim with a large fleet.
When Alexander the Great threatened the people of Scythia, their ambassadors reminded him that a conqueror has many more burdens to carry than an ally has.
In 329 BC, during his Persian Campaign, Alexander the Great defeated the Scythians at the Battle of Jaxartes near Cyropolis, now Khujand in Tajikistan. Prior to the battle, the Scythians (a people of the steppes) warned him that allies were better then enemies, and customers better than slaves, and that those who thought themselves exceptional should not behave like everyday tinpot tyrants.
Seventeenth-century poet and statesman Edmund Waller reflects on the benefits of advancing years.
A great deal is made today of the advantages of youth in benefiting society. Edmund Waller, a poet who sat in the Commons for over fifty years, was no less impressed by the advantages of old age — which not only renew our usefulness for this world, but also ready us for a better one.
Vice is a fact of life, wrote Pope, and God can even bring good out of it; but vice is never a virtue and in tackling vice together we make our society stronger.
In his Essay on Man, Alexander Pope has been reflecting on the part played in society by folly and vice. There is vice and virtue in every man, he says, and human life is like a canvas of blended light and shade: but if vice ought to excite pity and friendship rather than judgment and anger, that should not dupe us into thinking that society can survive if we turn vices into virtues, and virtue into a vice.
Mr Squeers explains his educational philosophy to his new and bewildered assistant master at Dotheboys Hall in Yorkshire.
Mr Squeers, owner and headmaster of Dotheboys Hall near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire, has (much to the bafflement of Mrs Squeers) hired an assistant master from London, nineteen-year-old Nicholas Nickleby. The moment has now come for the new arrival to familiarise himself with a system of education designed to fit young people for the world of work — chiefly in Dotheboys Hall.