(9 December 1839 – 12 February 1927) was an English
Conservative Party
politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1874 to 1906.
Halsey came from one of the most prominent families of Hertfordshire
, whose seat was at Gaddesden Place
, near Hemel Hempstead
. He was the son of Thomas Plumer Halsey
and his wife Frederica Johnston, daughter of General F. Johnston. His father was Member of Parliament
(MP) for Hertfordshire
from 1847 until he was drowned with his wife and his younger son in the shipwreck of the steamer Ercolano in the Gulf of Genoa
on 24 April 1854.
Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.
It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.
It’s the quality of the ordinary, the straight, the square, that accounts for the great stability and success of our nation. It’s a quality to be proud of. But it’s a quality that many people seem to have neglected.
Much of what passes for quality on British television is no more than a reflection of the narrow elite which controls it and has always thought that its tastes were synonymous with quality.
One cannot develop taste from what is of average quality but only from the very best.
One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.
People of quality know everything without ever having learned anything.
So cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives.
The measure of your quality as a public person, as a citizen, is the gap between what you do and what you say.