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The Three Half-Moons
Essays include:
The Three Half-Moons
The Rear-Guard
Pink Carnations
The Hall of Mirrors
The Secret Store
Empty Houses
The Emperor
On Sowing Hopeseed
The Land of Dreams
The Broken Chain
Daffodils
When Knights Were Bold
Ned Lavender
The Leopard's Skin
The Chariots of God
The Golden Triangle
The Silkworms
The Eagle's Nest
The Breaking of the Drought
Skipper Dunlop
The Pull of Things
Corrugated Iron
The Sunny Side of the Ranges
The Topmost Crag
A Saxon Princess
The Clockwork Mouse
The Three Half-Moons
The Rear-Guard
Pink Carnations
The Hall of Mirrors
The Secret Store
Empty Houses
The Emperor
On Sowing Hopeseed
The Land of Dreams
The Broken Chain
Daffodils
When Knights Were Bold
Ned Lavender
The Leopard's Skin
The Chariots of God
The Golden Triangle
The Silkworms
The Eagle's Nest
The Breaking of the Drought
Skipper Dunlop
The Pull of Things
Corrugated Iron
The Sunny Side of the Ranges
The Topmost Crag
A Saxon Princess
The Clockwork Mouse
319 pages, Paperback
Published August 2, 2017
5 people are currently reading
15 people want to read
About the author
F.W. Boreham
204 books57 followersRev. Dr. Frank W. Boreham
(March 3rd 1871 – May 18th 1959) Served, and wrote, in the UK, New Zealand, and Australia.
(March 3rd 1871 – May 18th 1959) Served, and wrote, in the UK, New Zealand, and Australia.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 11, 2021
By now anyone who reads my reviews of Boreham's works knows the drill. It was everything I hoped for and more and these are some of the takeaway quotes that are still resonating with me (in a few cases, I wish I could just post the entire essay as I wish that everyone in the world would read it, but that is not feasible)...
"Not by a first casual glance, but by a steady deliberate aim of the eye, are the rarest things discovered. You must look intently, and hold your eye firmly to the spot, if you are to see more than do the rank and file of mankind." -John Burroughs
"I can very well afford to miss the sordid as long as I gaze with open face on the sublime. But if I miss the things that are subtle and eternal, and only notice the things that are showy and temporal, there will be no laughter on my lips as I recite the story of my unpardonable stupidity."
"Of friends and acquaintances there are two kinds; there are those who lead me to a false estimate of myself, and there are those who teach me to know myself. There are those whose influence upon me makes for affectation and there are those whose influence upon me makes for revelation. There are those who make me turn my back upon myself, and there are those who compel me to look myself straight in the face and to know myself for what I am."
"What Hamlet did for Claudius in literature, and Nathan did for David in scripture, our best novelists and dramatists have been doing for us ever since."
"O God," prayed Thomas Carlyle, as he took his hat from the peg, "help me to be king over all that list beneath this hat!"
"Well, we say a great deal about Faith, and a great deal about Charity; but poor Hope, somehow, gets left out in the cold!"
"Nature is the supreme revelation of the amazing hopefulness of God."
"It seems to me that the choicest, sweetest, sanest, and most lovable people I have ever known have been the people who have constantly filled their pockets with hope seed and who have taken care to keep a hole in every pocket."
"Can it be argued that, if one man rises from the dead, it is a miracle; but that, if a million men rise from the dead, it is no miracle? Spring is not only miraculous; it is the multiplication of the miraculous. It is miracle by wholesale. And it is the miraculous in the Spring that secretly appeals to us."
"It is the tree that stands alone that feels the force of every wind that blows."
"When Christ opened to me that He was tempted by the same devil and overcame him and bruised his head, and that through Him and His grace, I might overcome also, I put my trust in Him. It is the only thing a tempted man can do." -George Fox
"I have learned that life is not a game of chance. There are wonderful laws of adjustment constantly at work. Things fit in!"
"I am an old man now" - the words were carved by a monk on the wall of his cell - "I am an old man now: I have had lots of trouble; and most of it never happened."
Says Jean de La Bruyere, the French philosopher of the seventeenth century, "there are frightful and horrible calamities which we dare not think of, and the mere sight of which makes us shudder. If it happens to a man to encounter them, he finds resources in himself of which he is not aware. He stiffens himself against his misfortune and bears it better than he could have expected."
"The history of England is, far and away, the greatest romance that has ever been written."
"No nation has a right to pray for rain until it has built dams and aqueducts and reservoirs. Intercession and conservation must go hand in hand. How can I ask heaven to send rain unless I have made ample provision for its storage?"
"In any case, it is a good thing to behave as though you expected the thing you most need."
"I have heard people boasting that they are prepared for the worst. It is nothing to boast about. Most people are prepared for the worst; very few are prepared for the best. Life has a way of treating us according to our expectations."
"You're beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that?
Come up with a smiling face;
It's nothing against you to fall down flat,
But to lie there, that's disgrace.
Oh, a trouble's a ton, or a trouble's an ounce,
Or a trouble's what you make it,
And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts,
But only how did you take it." -Edmund Vance Cook
"Therein lies the essential difference between a man and a beast. A man is fevered with the restlessness of infinity; a beast is content with the green paddocks in which he happens to be grazing."
"Man is a feeble reed, trembling in the midst of creation. But then he is endowed with thought. It does not need the universe to arm for his destruction. A breath of wind, a drop of water will suffice to kill him. But, though the universe were to fall on man and crush him, he would be greater in his death than the universe in its victory; for he would be conscious of his defeat whilst the universe would not be conscious of its triumph." -Blaise Pascal (How I love it when one of my favorites quotes another of my favorites!)
"The man who thinks of the universe as mere dust and ashes as compared with his own immeasurable personality will feel it an unthinkable desecration to degrade the boundless potentialities of his wondrous being by harnessing them to unworthy or ignoble ends."
"Not by a first casual glance, but by a steady deliberate aim of the eye, are the rarest things discovered. You must look intently, and hold your eye firmly to the spot, if you are to see more than do the rank and file of mankind." -John Burroughs
"I can very well afford to miss the sordid as long as I gaze with open face on the sublime. But if I miss the things that are subtle and eternal, and only notice the things that are showy and temporal, there will be no laughter on my lips as I recite the story of my unpardonable stupidity."
"Of friends and acquaintances there are two kinds; there are those who lead me to a false estimate of myself, and there are those who teach me to know myself. There are those whose influence upon me makes for affectation and there are those whose influence upon me makes for revelation. There are those who make me turn my back upon myself, and there are those who compel me to look myself straight in the face and to know myself for what I am."
"What Hamlet did for Claudius in literature, and Nathan did for David in scripture, our best novelists and dramatists have been doing for us ever since."
"O God," prayed Thomas Carlyle, as he took his hat from the peg, "help me to be king over all that list beneath this hat!"
"Well, we say a great deal about Faith, and a great deal about Charity; but poor Hope, somehow, gets left out in the cold!"
"Nature is the supreme revelation of the amazing hopefulness of God."
"It seems to me that the choicest, sweetest, sanest, and most lovable people I have ever known have been the people who have constantly filled their pockets with hope seed and who have taken care to keep a hole in every pocket."
"Can it be argued that, if one man rises from the dead, it is a miracle; but that, if a million men rise from the dead, it is no miracle? Spring is not only miraculous; it is the multiplication of the miraculous. It is miracle by wholesale. And it is the miraculous in the Spring that secretly appeals to us."
"It is the tree that stands alone that feels the force of every wind that blows."
"When Christ opened to me that He was tempted by the same devil and overcame him and bruised his head, and that through Him and His grace, I might overcome also, I put my trust in Him. It is the only thing a tempted man can do." -George Fox
"I have learned that life is not a game of chance. There are wonderful laws of adjustment constantly at work. Things fit in!"
"I am an old man now" - the words were carved by a monk on the wall of his cell - "I am an old man now: I have had lots of trouble; and most of it never happened."
Says Jean de La Bruyere, the French philosopher of the seventeenth century, "there are frightful and horrible calamities which we dare not think of, and the mere sight of which makes us shudder. If it happens to a man to encounter them, he finds resources in himself of which he is not aware. He stiffens himself against his misfortune and bears it better than he could have expected."
"The history of England is, far and away, the greatest romance that has ever been written."
"No nation has a right to pray for rain until it has built dams and aqueducts and reservoirs. Intercession and conservation must go hand in hand. How can I ask heaven to send rain unless I have made ample provision for its storage?"
"In any case, it is a good thing to behave as though you expected the thing you most need."
"I have heard people boasting that they are prepared for the worst. It is nothing to boast about. Most people are prepared for the worst; very few are prepared for the best. Life has a way of treating us according to our expectations."
"You're beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that?
Come up with a smiling face;
It's nothing against you to fall down flat,
But to lie there, that's disgrace.
Oh, a trouble's a ton, or a trouble's an ounce,
Or a trouble's what you make it,
And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts,
But only how did you take it." -Edmund Vance Cook
"Therein lies the essential difference between a man and a beast. A man is fevered with the restlessness of infinity; a beast is content with the green paddocks in which he happens to be grazing."
"Man is a feeble reed, trembling in the midst of creation. But then he is endowed with thought. It does not need the universe to arm for his destruction. A breath of wind, a drop of water will suffice to kill him. But, though the universe were to fall on man and crush him, he would be greater in his death than the universe in its victory; for he would be conscious of his defeat whilst the universe would not be conscious of its triumph." -Blaise Pascal (How I love it when one of my favorites quotes another of my favorites!)
"The man who thinks of the universe as mere dust and ashes as compared with his own immeasurable personality will feel it an unthinkable desecration to degrade the boundless potentialities of his wondrous being by harnessing them to unworthy or ignoble ends."
April 6, 2020
What a great book of Boreham essays! My top five upon this reading are: The Three Half Moons, The Rear-Guard, The Broken Chain, The Silkworms, and The Breaking of the Drought.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews