Life
Born in Cork the son and heir of one of the most prosperous merchants of that city, Alderman John Thompson, who held, amongst other offices, that of Mayor in 1794. William inherited the small trading fleet and landed estate near Glandore, West Cork after his father's death in 1814. Rejecting the role of absentee landlord commonly led by those of a similar situation, William based his living quarters on the estate and despite many travels, invested much time with the tenants on the estate introducing agricultural innovations, services and education for children aimed at improving the welfare and prosperity of the families present.
Victim of weak health from an early age, Thompson became a non-smoker, teetotaller and vegetarian for the last 13 years of his life. These abstemious habits, he explained helped him in concentrating on his reading and writing. Nonetheless, by the 1830s he was suffering from a chest affliction that finally killed him on 28 March 1833. He had never married and left no direct heir.
Read more about this topic: William Thompson (philosopher)
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“I learned early in life that you get places by having the right enemies.”
—Bishop John Spong (b. 1931)
“The symbol of perpetual youth, the grass-blade, like a long green ribbon, streams from the sod into the summer, checked indeed by the frost, but anon pushing on again, lifting its spear of last year’s hay with the fresh life below. It grows as steadily as the rill oozes out of the ground.... So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The child begins life as a pleasure-seeking animal; his infantile personality is organized around his own appetites and his own body. In the course of his rearing the goal of exclusive pleasure seeking must be modified drastically, the fundamental urges must be subject to the dictates of conscience and society, urges must be capable of postponement and in some instances of renunciation completely.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)