Opposition
There was opposition to the proposals from those who were against what they saw as destruction of the Lake District landscape. Those opposing included the poet William Wordsworth. His letters to the editor of the Morning Post are reproduced in The Illustrated Wordsworth's Guide to the Lakes, P. Bicknell, Ed. (Congdon and Weed, New York, 1984), pp. 186–198. His reactions to the technological and "picturesque" incursions of man on his beloved, wild landscape most famously include the following sonnet:
- Is then no nook of English ground secure
- From rash assault? Schemes of retirement sown
- In youth, and 'mid the busy world kept pure
- As when their earliest flowers of hope were blown,
- Must perish;—how can they this blight endure?
- And must he too the ruthless change bemoan
- Who scorns a false utilitarian lure
- 'Mid his paternal fields at random thrown?
- Baffle the threat, bright Scene, from Orresthead
- Given to the pausing traveller's rapturous glance:
- Plead for thy peace, thou beautiful romance
- Of nature; and, if human hearts be dead,
- Speak, passing winds; ye torrents, with your strong
- And constant voice, protest against the wrong.
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Famous quotes containing the word opposition:
“The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters. For his supporters will push him to disaster unless his opponents show him where the dangers are. So if he is wise he will often pray to be delivered from his friends, because they will ruin him. But though it hurts, he ought also to pray never to be left without opponents; for they keep him on the path of reason and good sense.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“It is useless to check the vain dunce who has caught the mania of scribbling, whether prose or poetry, canzonets or criticisms,—let such a one go on till the disease exhausts itself. Opposition like water, thrown on burning oil, but increases the evil, because a person of weak judgment will seldom listen to reason, but become obstinate under reproof.”
—Sarah Josepha Buell Hale 1788–1879, U.S. novelist, poet and women’s magazine editor. American Ladies Magazine, pp. 36-40 (December 1828)
“Except for poverty, incompatibility, opposition of parents, absence of love on one side and of desire to marry on both, nothing stands in the way of our happy union.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)