Cultural References
According to E. H. Coleridge, Beckford is the person referred to in Lord Byron's short poem, "To Dives — A Fragment." Byron describes a person of great wealth, "of Wit, in Genius, as in Wealth the first," who feels "Wrath's vial on thy lofty head burst" when he is "seduced to deeds accurst" and "smitten with th' unhallowed thirst of Crime unnamed." Byron also refers to him in Childe Harold, Canto I, stanza 22. (The poems are readily retrievable online from many sources, as is Coleridge's edition of Byron's works.)
Read more about this topic: William Thomas Beckford
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“The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)