"To achieve a skill or academic standard beyond the normal level of attainment, the student needs earnest diligence and appropriate study. To become very accomplished at one's art, nothing less than practise, practise and more practise is required. You cannot however, become a genius; if one is, one is simply born one! But you can become a good person with a level of sensitivity that touches everyone and is in tune with the condition of another; we all can!
Given what I know today, I now believe that is of far greater worth to recognise the pleasures and pain of the human heart than to understand the intricacy of its workings. I believe we serve humanity better if we can sense the heartache of another than learn how to transplant a heart on the operating theatre of modern surgery. I believe that it is far better in character building to learn to shake hands with Nature and the community that daily surrounds us than to have the ability to locate and recite perfectly all of those countries that fill the globe's earthly surface. I believe that it is far more rewarding to walk in the shoes of a beggar than to spend hundreds of pounds in a retail store upon surplus clothes of fashion that suit not the gravity of the occasion. I believe real life lives next door in the dwelling of our neighbour and on the street outside our front doors, rather than in passages of the bible or within the pages of the entire works of Shakespeare or some philosophical book. Far better to be disposed to helping others than helping oneself advance up the greasy pole of economic success or academic excellence.
This is neither to disregard nor disparage knowledge or to minimise the importance of academic achievement, or seek to denigrate avenues of advancement in one's life. Instead, I advocate that awareness of another's thoughts, feelings and state of their prevailing condition is far more knowledgeable and worthwhile a thing to hold than all the letters of academic distinction ever amassed, every word contained within all the books of the world's library or even the brilliance to be found in the brightest star in the sky above." William Forde: April 13th, 2016.