Edwin Percy Whipple Quotes
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In activity we must find our joy as well as glory; and labor, like everything else that is good, is its own reward.
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Talent is full of thoughts, Genius is thought. Talent is a cistern, Genius a fountain.
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Character is the spiritual body of the person, and represents the individualization of vital experience, the conversion of unconscious things into self-conscious men.
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From Lucifer to Jerry Sneak there is not an aspect of evil, imperfection, and littleness which can elude the lights of humor or the lightning of wit.
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No education deserves the name unless it develops thought, unless it pierces down to the mysterious spiritual principle of mind, and starts that into activity and growth.
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Men educate each other in reason by contact or collision, and keep each other sane by the very conflict of their separate hobbies. Society as a whole is the deadly enemy of the particular crotchet of each, and solitude is almost the only condition in which the acorn of conceit can grow to the oak of perfect self-delusion.
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The bitterest satires and noblest eulogies on married life have come from poets.
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There is a natural disposition with us to judge an author's personal character by the character of his works. We find it difficult to understand the common antithesis of a good writer and a bad man.
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God, in His wrath, has not left this world to the mercy of the subtlest dialectician; and all arguments are happily transitory in their effect when they contradict the primal intuitions of conscience and the inborn sentiments of the heart.
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The familiar writer is apt to be his own satirist. Out of his own mouth is he judged.
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Genius is not a single power, but a combination of great powers. It reasons, but it is not reasoning; it judges, but it is not judgment; imagines, but it is not imagination; it feels deeply and fiercely, but it is not passion. It is neither, because it is all.
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The minister's brain is often the "poor-box" of the church.
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A true teacher should penetrate to whatever is vital in his pupil, and develop that by the light and heat of his own intelligence.
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The essence of the ludicrous consists in surprise,--in unexpected terms of feeling and explosions of thought,--often bringing dissimilar things together with a shock; as when some wit called Boyle, the celebrated philosopher, the father of chemistry and brother of the Earl of Cork.
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Whenever you find humour, you find pathos close by its side.
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Heroism is no extempore work of transient impulse--a rocket rushing fretfully up to disturb the darkness by which, after a moment's insulting radiance, it is ruthlessly swallowed up,--but a steady fire, which darts forth tongues of flame. It is no sparkling epigram of action, but a luminous epic of character.
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Nothing is rarer than the use of a word in its exact meaning.
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Even in social life, it is persistency which attracts confidence, more than talents and accomplishments.
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Genius may be almost defined as the faculty of acquiring poverty.
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Nature does not capriciously scatter her secrets as golden gifts to lazy pets and luxurious darlings, but imposes tasks when she presents opportunities, and uplifts him whom she would inform. The apple that she drops at the feet of Newton is but a coy invitation to follow her to the stars.
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The purity of the critical ermine, like that of the judicial, is often soiled by contact with politics.
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The strife of politics tends to unsettle the calmest understanding, and ulcerate the most benevolent heart. There are no bigotries or absurdities too gross for parties to create or adopt under the stimulus of political passions.
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Dignity is often a veil between us and the real truth of things.
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The inborn geniality of some people amounts to genius.