Question

Write a character sketch of william ralph inge as revealed solely by his views in happy people essay

Answer 1

Answer:Happy People summery

By William Ralph Inge

In the essay ‘Happy People’ the writer, William Ralph Inge explores the question of what makes people happy and who are considered to be happy people. In the book of Proverbs written by King Solomon, he writes that, ‘Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can fully share its joy’. Robert Browning thanks God that the meanest of his creatures has two soul-sides, one to face the world with and one to show a woman when he loves her. It is very rare for someone to completely share one’s feelings.

According to Inge, for most people, happiness is their being’s end and aim. The author feels that he can easily separate the years when he was happy from the years he was not, but immediately states that one is never either so happy or so miserable as one assumes to be. He feels that the game of life is worth playing, but the struggle is the actual prize.

He opines that young people are unhappy as they have to go through several conflicts. Robert Browning and many old people believe that old age is the best age in one’s life. He feels that marriage too is probably the happiest state when the partners are well matched. He feels that the happiest people are those who don’t have any particular reason to be happy. The writer feels that the happiest man in England may probably be a mad man although no one would want to trade places with such a person.

The biographies of great men reveal that they were subject to frequent and severe fits of depression. The medieval monks placed among the Seven Deadly Sins, one which they called Acedia, which is a compound of dejection, sloth and irritability. Religion is a great source of happiness, although it is prone to more serious misery than any other. Inge is of the opinion that running away from life ought not to make people happy and prefers unworldliness based on knowledge of the world as a better option. He urges readers to read the book, ‘The Sadhu’, which is centred on the life of Sadhu Sundar Singh, who in spite of his travails and persecution, still was as happy as most other Christ-like saints.

The author would like to wish for three gifts from the fairy godmother. The first would be wisdom, the second domestic happiness and the third for the approval of his fellowmen. He disagrees with the views of Napoleon Bonaparte, who felt that a hard heart is a recipe for happiness and feels that a life without affection and sympathy could only give negative kind of happiness. Inge feels that people live in evil times and public affairs are taken more tragically than how they were taken in the eighteenth century. He gives the example of Dr Johnson who lived through the American war and illustrates Johnson’s stance on how well he dealt with public calamities through a dialogue he had with Boswell, who on the other hand was too perturbed by the misfortunes of those times. He finally seems to reiterate the fact that trusting in God’s ability to handle everything happening around us- good or bad- is the secret for our peace and happiness.

Explanation:

Answer 2

The existence of William Ralph Inge, late "melancholy dignitary" of St. Paul's Cathedral, traversed 94 years of the beyond 100. He kicked the bucket in 1954, twenty years subsequent to resigning from the post known as the researcher's podium in the Church of England. For the greater part of a century, Inge was the main fig­ure in the scholarly and otherworldly existence of England.

William Ralph Inge

• Around the same time, he contributed a foreword to Advance to Barbarism by F. J. P. Veale, a sobering ac­count of current civilization's stagger toward brutality in World War II and its outcome.
• Between his initially distributed work and his last, this solemn figure delivered a consistent progression of books, expositions, addresses, and ser­mons. He procured the hesitant re­spect concurred priests by the scholastic local area for works of the fantastic grant —, for example, his conclusive two-volume ac­count of The Philosophy of Plo­tinus, the Gifford Lectures of 1917­18 — and he arrived at a general au­dience too. During the twenties, he attacked the field of reporting with week after week paper articles which made his name and face recognizable to the man on the road. He had a remark on a va­riety of subjects and was gifted with a wonderful scholarly style — clear, scathing, and clever. His news­paper pieces were gathered in four books which even currently might be perused with joy.
• Be that as it may, notwithstanding Inge's contribution in the learned person, strict, and scholarly flows of the beyond fifty years, he was never totally at home in any of them. He was his very own excess man — and God's — ever to turn into a famous figure, and he had a lot of holds to turn into the boss of any party or development. In religion, in way of thinking, and in governmental issues he be­longed to schools endorsed by the extraordinary practice, however increas­ingly disavowed in the 20th hundred years.
• He was in conflict with his times, however, it was simply because he heard the mood of more far off the music. Devoted to reality, he was a long-lasting observer for the sake "of wastes of time, and for­saken convictions, and disliked names, and unthinkable loyalties" — to get Arnold's words about Oxford.

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