Character
Thirlwall's private life was happy and busy. Though never married, he was fond of children and of all weak things except weak-minded clergymen. He had a very judicial mind, and John Stuart Mill said he was the best orator he had ever heard. During his latter years he took great interest in the revision of the authorized version of the Bible, and was chairman of the revisers of the Old Testament.
He resigned his see in May 1874, and retired to Bath, where he died. He was buried in Westminster Abbey in the same grave as Grote.
As scholar, critic and ecclesiastical statesman Thirlwall stands very high. He was not a great original thinker; he lacked the creative faculty and the creative impulse. His character, with its mixture of greatness and gentleness, was thus read by Carlyle: "A right solid, honest-hearted man, full of knowledge and sense, and, in spite of his positive temper, almost timid."
Read more about this topic: Connop Thirlwall
Famous quotes containing the word character:
“When I think of some of the Persians, the Hindus, the Arabs I knew, when I think of the character they revealed, their grace, their tenderness, their intelligence, their holiness, I spit on the white conquerors of the world, the degenerate British, the pigheaded Germans, the smug self-satisfied French.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“But boys and girls, pale from the imagined love
Of solitary beds, knew what they were,
That passion could bring character enough
And pressed at midnighht in some public place
Live lips upon a plummet-measured face.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Common-sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made of the prejudices of childhood, the idiosyncrasies of individual character and the opinion of the newspapers.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1966)