Quotes by Robert C. Richardson

“Towards the southern end of this attack was the 56th Brigade, with the 7th Loyal North Lancashires on its northern front. C Company suffered badly from machine gun fire during the advance, as did B and D Companies from a farm which the brigade on their left had failed to capture. Among 90 7th LNL men killed and wounded that day were John Foley and Robert Ramsbottom; before they were relieved on the night of 3rd August, Edmund Jones had also died.””

“Common Closure Principle: The classes in a package should be closed together against the same kinds of changes. A change that affects a package affects all the classes in that package. Robert C. Martin””

“This is the view that the world itself is symbolic, the view C. S. Lewis adopts when he notes that in symbolism it is we who are the allegory, the view that Robbe-Grillet rejects when he says, disapprovingly, that if you begin by believing in metaphor you will end by believing in God.””

“Stoicism had an enormous impact on Emerson and his circle, probably greater than that of Puritanism, whether direct or indirect. Stoicism, like Puritanism, is more than a matter of character traits; it is a body of thought underlying and giving coherence to certain character traits. It teaches that we must turn to nature as the primary source of moral principles. Stoicism was founded by Zeno, at the end of the fourth century B.C., after Alexander had shattered the Greek polis, which had been the traditional context for moral action. From Zeno to Marcus Aurelius, the Stoics aimed to provide a basis for moral action and a means of personal well-being in the natural endowments of any human being, irrespective of social status. The value of any particular theoretical inquiry depends on whether it has any significance for the moral life. Stoicism is not anti-intellectual. It insists that true morality is impossible without knowledge, especially scientific knowledge. Stoicism endorses Heraclitus’s “All individual things in the world are manifestations of one primary substance” and insists that there is a law that governs the course of nature and should govern human action. Stoicism has been claimed as a Semitic element in Greek thought and as a pagan element in Christianity. In Emerson and Thoreau it takes on its modern form of self-reliance understood not as self-sufficiency but as self-respect.””