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Felicity, not fluency of language, is a merit.

Edwin Percy Whipple

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Edwin Percy Whipple
Age: 67 †
Born: 1819
Born: March 8
Died: 1886
Died: June 16
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Writer
Gloucester
Massachusetts
Fluency
Felicity
Merit
Happiness
Language

More quotes by Edwin Percy Whipple

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Of the three prerequisites of genius the first is soul the second is soul and the third is soul.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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Genius may be almost defined as the faculty of acquiring poverty.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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In most old communities there is a common sense even in sensuality. Vice itself gets gradually digested into a system, is amenable to certain laws of conventional propriety and honor, has for its object simply the gratification of its appetites, and frowns with quite a conservative air on all new inventions, all untried experiments in iniquity.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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What does competency in the long run mean? It means to all reasonable beings, cleanliness of person, decency of dress, courtesy of manners, opportunities for education, the delights of leisure, and the bliss of giving.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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The familiar writer is apt to be his own satirist. Out of his own mouth is he judged.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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Whenever you find humour, you find pathos close by its side.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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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.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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Talent is full of thoughts, Genius is thought. Talent is a cistern, Genius a fountain.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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Nature and society are so replete with startling contrasts that wit often consists in the mere statement and comparison of facts, as when Hume says that the ancient Muscovites wedded their wives with a whip instead of a ring.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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Sydney Smith playfully says that common sense was invented by Socrates, that philosopher having been one of its most conspicuous exemplars in conducting the contest of practical sagacity against stupid prejudice and illusory beliefs.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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Sin, every day, takes out a patent for some new invention.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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The contemplation of beauty in nature, in art, in literature, in human character, diffuses through our being a soothing and subtle joy, by which the heart's anxious and aching cares are softly smiled away.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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The universal line of distinction between the strong and the weak is that one persists the other hesitates, falters, trifles, and at last collapses or caves in.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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We like the fine extravagance of that philosopher who declared that no man was as rich as all men ought to be.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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Mirth is a Proteus, changing its shape and manner with the thousand diversities of individual character, from the most superfluous gayety to the deepest, moat earnest humor.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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The purity of the critical ermine, like that of the judicial, is often soiled by contact with politics.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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Cervantes shrewdly advises to lay a bridge of silver for a flying enemy.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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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.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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As men neither fear nor respect what has been made contemptible, all honor to him who makes oppression laughable as well as detestable. Armies cannot protect it then and walls which have remained impenetrable to cannon have fallen before a roar of laughter or a hiss of contempt.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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The minister's brain is often the poor-box of the church.
Edwin Percy Whipple