A. C. Benson (Arthur Christopher Benson, 1862–1925) was a British essayist, poet, and academic known for his reflective and often melancholic writings. He was born into a distinguished family, with his father, Edward White Benson, serving as the Archbishop of Canterbury, and his brothers also notable in the literary and academic fields.
Benson is best known for his essays and diary entries, which provide insight into his personal struggles with depression and introspective thoughts on life, education, and spirituality. His most famous works include the hymn Land of Hope and Glory, for which he wrote the lyrics, and his essays, such as The Upton Letters (1905) and From a College Window (1906).
“Very often a change of self is needed more than a change of scene.”
— A. C. Benson
“People seldom refuse help, if one offers it in the right way.”
— A. C. Benson
“Readjusting is a painful process, but most of us need it at one time or another.”
— A. C. Benson
“People who deal with life generously and large-heartedly go on multiplying relationships to the end.”
— A. C. Benson
“Because of a friend, life is a little stronger, fuller, more gracious thing for the friend’s existence, whether he be near or far. If the friend is close at hand, that is best; but if he is far away he still is there to think of, to wonder about, to hear from, to write to, to share life and experience with, to serve, to honor, to admire, to love.”
— A. C. Benson
“The worst sorrows in life are not in its losses and misfortunes, but its fears.”
— A. C. Benson
“Keeping up appearances is the most expensive thing in the world.”
— A. C. Benson
“The moment that any life, however good, stifles you, you may be sure it isn’t your real life.”
— A. C. Benson
“As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow.”
— A. C. Benson
“I believe in instinct, not reason. When reason is right, nine times out of ten it is impotent, and when it prevails, nine times out of ten it is wrong.”
— A. C. Benson
“The joy of all mysteries is the certainty which comes from their contemplation, that there are many doors yet for the soul to open on her upward and inward way.”
— A. C. Benson
“I don’t like authority, at least I don’t like other people’s authority.”
— A. C. Benson
“A well begun is half ended.”
— A. C. Benson
“It seems sometimes as if one were powerless to do any more from within to overcome troubles, and that help must come from without.”
— A. C. Benson
“It is often wonderful how putting down on paper a clear statement of a case helps one to see, not perhaps the way out, but the way in.”
— A. C. Benson
“I think I feel rather differently about sympathy to what seems the normal view. I like just to feel it is there, but not always expressed.”
— A. C. Benson
“I expect that all of us get pretty much what we deserve of appreciation.”
— A. C. Benson
“Congenial labor is the secret of happiness.”
— A. C. Benson
“The friend is the person whom one is in need of and by whom one is needed.”
— A. C. Benson
“When you get to my age life seems little more than one long march to and from the lavatory.”
— A. C. Benson
“There remain times when one can only endure. One lives on, one doesn’t die, and the only thing that one can do, is to fill one’s mind and time as far as possible with the concerns of other people. It doesn’t bring immediate peace, but it brings the dawn nearer.”
— A. C. Benson
“Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.”
— A. C. Benson
“One’s mind has a way of making itself up in the background, and it suddenly becomes clear what one means to do.”
— A. C. Benson
“I never enter a new company without the hope that I may discover a friend, perhaps the friend, sitting there with an expectant smile. That hope survives a thousand disappointments.”
— A. C. Benson
“Congenial labor is essence of happiness.”
— A. C. Benson
“All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality — the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.”
— A. C. Benson
“A diary need not be a dreary chronicle of one’s movements; it should aim rather at giving salient account of some particular episode, a walk, a book, a conversation.”
— A. C. Benson
“I have known some quite good people who were unhappy, but never an interested person who was unhappy.”
— A. C. Benson
“Do you know the times when one seems to stick fast in circumstances like the fly in the jam-pot? It can’t be helped, and I suppose the best thing to do is to lay in a good store of jam!”
— A. C. Benson
“I am sure it is one’s duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one’s own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this.”
— A. C. Benson
“The test of a good letter is a very simple one. If one seems to hear the other person talking as one reads, it is a good letter.”
— A. C. Benson
“What a strange power the perception of beauty is! It seems to ebb and flow like some secret tide, independent alike of health and disease, of joy or sorrow. There are times in our lives when we seem to go singing on our way, and when the beauty of the world sets itself like a quiet harmony to the song we uplift.”
— A. C. Benson
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