Where reality is poetry and
Stars are arbiters, where gates of splendour
Open to admit the dawn, and golden
Pillars are the living earth’s foundation,
There I live, in silent exultation.
Archive for June, 2006
Aristotle is worth reading. The Poetics is no exception even though is fragmentary nature means that there is much that is lost to us. The style, in fact, resembles nothing so much as a speaker’s notes. But there is much to be gained from the man who was known for many years simply as The Philosopher.
Read more on Aristotle on homiletics and Biblical criticism…
I recently had the pleasure of reading one of the most horrifying books I have ever read: The Double Life of Mr Alfred Burton. It was written by the delightful E Phillips Oppenheim, who also wrote one of my favourite tales of mistaken identity, The Great Impersonation.
Grenville Kleiser is a name that will doubtless continue to be revered in many years time. His pretensions are apparent in his bibliography (here considerably abbreviated): Business Building and Speech Efficiency; Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases: A Practical Handbook Of Pertinent Expressions, Striking Similes, Literary, Commercial, Conversational, And Oratorical Terms, For The Embellishment Of Speech And Literature, And The Improvement Of The Vocabulary Of Those Persons Who Read, Write, And Speak English; How to Build Mental Power; How to Develop Power and Personality in Speaking; How to Develop Self Confidence in Speech and Manner; Make Your Life Worth Living; Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study; Talks on Talking; Talking for Results; The Training of a Public Speaker; and Training for Power and Leadership.
