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:
“One may disavow and disclaim vices that surprise us, and whereto our passions transport us; but those which by long habits are rooted in a strong and ... powerful will are not subject to contradiction. Repentance is but a denying of our will, and an opposition of our fantasies.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“A man with your experience in affairs must have seen cause to appreciate the futility of opposition to the moral sentiment. However feeble the sufferer and however great the oppressor, it is in the nature of things that the blow should recoil upon the aggressor. For God is in the sentiment, and it cannot be withstood.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“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)