Private Life
Shoghi Effendi's personal life was largely subordinate to his work as Guardian of the religion. His lack of secretarial support with the mass of correspondence had left a pattern of hard work in Haifa interspersed with occasional summer breaks to Europe — in the early years often to the Swiss Alps. In 1929 and 1940 he also travelled through Africa from south to north.
Shoghi Effendi had a great love for the English language. Carrying with him a short note-book, he would note down words and sentences he liked. He was an avid fan of music and English literature, and enjoyed reading the King James Bible. His favourite book was The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Whilst a young man studying in Oxford, Shoghi Effendi was part of a debating society and enjoyed playing tennis. He was noted for speaking English in subtle received pronunciation, and Persian in an Isfahani dialect, inherited from his grandmother.
Read more about this topic: Shoghi Effendi
Famous quotes containing the words private and/or life:
“Now, we deny not, but that politicians may sometimes abuse religion, and make it serve for the promoting of their own private interests and designs; which yet they could not do so well neither, were the thing itself a mere cheat and figment of their own, and had no reality at all in nature, nor anything solid at the bottom of it.”
—Ralph J. Cudworth (1617–1688)
“There are situations in life to which the only satisfactory response is a physically violent one. If you don’t make that response, you continually relive the unresolved situation over and over in your life.”
—Russell Hoban (b. 1925)