“I learnt by my eyes, picking out words as I picked out cats from dogs…” — William Brighty Rands | V2Melody

“I learnt by my eyes, picking out words as I picked out cats from dogs, and trees from lamp-posts.”

Describing a visual, comparative method of early reading that later aided language learning · Autobiography of an Irreconcilable (memoirs)

William Brighty Rands

About William Brighty Rands

William Brighty Rands

24 December 1823–23 April 1882

William Brighty Rands was born on 24 December 1823, in Chelsea, then a district on the western edge of London and already a place where commerce, domestic life, artistic ambition, and metropolitan poverty met in close quarters. He died on 23 April 1882, having lived only fifty-eight years, and his name is now far less…

More by William Brighty Rands

Poems by William Brighty Rands

More remarks by William Brighty Rands

“But the day is yet far off when the historian shall jostle the novelist out of his place.”

Defending imaginative literature against claims that history might supersede fiction · Essay, The New Fiction, as Henry Holbeach, 1880

“I was taught by my parents that, if I was struck on the right cheek, I should turn the left, and that I was to die rather than smite again. I never struck a blow and never received one, and I used to believe firmly that an angel from heaven would help me if I needed it.”

Expressing a lifelong commitment to non-violence rooted in parental teaching and childhood faith · Lilliput Lectures

“I was a born worshipper, with a strong tendency to mysticism of a kind that turned naturally to the One true Object of worship, and found pleasure in thinking of His presence anywhere and everywhere as a fact.”

Reflecting an innate sense of the divine rather than one imposed by upbringing · Autobiography of an Irreconcilable (memoirs)