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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #british
Such a prostitution of judicial power can never occur again under the shadow of the British law, for no jury within the wide circle of the empire would submit to such an infraction of their privilege, even if a judge could be found daring enough to attempt it. ↗
The advantages of a hereditary Monarchy are self-evident. Without some such method of prescriptive, immediate and automatic succession, an interregnum intervenes, rival claimants arise, continuity is interrupted and the magic lost. Even when Parliament had secured control of taxation and therefore of government; even when the menace of dynastic conflicts had receded in to the coloured past; even when kingship had ceased to be transcendental and had become one of many alternative institutional forms; the principle of hereditary Monarchy continued to furnish the State with certain specific and inimitable advantages. Apart from the imponderable, but deeply important, sentiments and affections which congregate around an ancient and legitimate Royal Family, a hereditary Monarch acquires sovereignty by processes which are wholly different from those by which a dictator seizes, or a President is granted, the headship of the State. The King personifies both the past history and the present identity of the Nation as a whole. Consecrated as he is to the service of his peoples, he possesses a religious sanction and is regarded as someone set apart from ordinary mortals. In an epoch of change, he remains the symbol of continuity; in a phase of disintegration, the element of cohesion; in times of mutability, the emblem of permanence. Governments come and go, politicians rise and fall: the Crown is always there. A legitimate Monarch moreover has no need to justify his existence, since he is there by natural right. He is not impelled as usurpers and dictators are impelled, either to mesmerise his people by a succession of dramatic triumphs, or to secure their acquiescence by internal terrorism or by the invention of external dangers. The appeal of hereditary Monarchy is to stability rather than to change, to continuity rather than to experiment, to custom rather than to novelty, to safety rather than to adventure. The Monarch, above all, is neutral. Whatever may be his personal prejudices or affections, he is bound to remain detached from all political parties and to preserve in his own person the equilibrium of the realm. An elected President – whether, as under some constitutions, he be no more than a representative functionary, or whether, as under other constitutions, he be the chief executive – can never inspire the same sense of absolute neutrality. However impartial he may strive to become, he must always remain the prisoner of his own partisan past; he is accompanied by friends and supporters whom he may seek to reward, or faced by former antagonists who will regard him with distrust. He cannot, to an equal extent, serve as the fly-wheel of the State. ↗
If Caribbean writers have one single unifying theme, it is a strong sense of place, and of home. There is also - always, beneath the humour, which is a West Indian characteristic - a sadness: an awareness of a past that can never really be forgotten, or forgiven." From The Writing Of The Caribbean, The Atlas Of Literature, edited by Malcolm Bradbury ↗
#caribbean #guyana #westindies #wi #home
Lying there in bed, dangling in a zone somewhere between sleep and consciousness, he was overcome by a strange feeling: that he was losing control of his life, and for the first time in recent years was unsure of the direction it was taking him." Carl Dias reflects on life in RACING WITH THE RAIN ↗
According to Yiannis' sister Irini, who had trained as a hairdresser in London, the British spent their long winters in grey and black, and this was why they chose such gaudy colours for the summer: turquoise with blue, orange with pink, mauve with indigo. Colours that didn't go well with the bleached hair of the women and the reddish flush of tans that resulted from too great a greediness for the sun, as if Mother Nature, who hated to be hurried, had imprinted her exasperation on their skin. ↗
I was the first woman British commissioner, the first woman trade commissioner, so I am also proud to be the first woman High Representative. ↗
