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An epigram often flashes light into regions where reason shines but dimly.
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
Light
Dimly
Reason
Flashes
Quotations
Shines
Flash
Regions
Shining
Epigram
Often
Epigrams
More quotes by Edwin Percy Whipple
Some men find happiness in gluttony and in drunkenness, but no delicate viands can touch their taste with the thrill of pleasure, and what generosity there is in wine steadily refuses to impart its glow to their shriveled hearts.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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
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
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.
Edwin Percy Whipple
Cervantes shrewdly advises to lay a bridge of silver for a flying enemy.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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
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
Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.
Edwin Percy Whipple
Pretension is nothing power is everything.
Edwin Percy Whipple
Knowledge, like religion, must be experienced in order to be known.
Edwin Percy Whipple
A politician weakly and amiably in the right, is no match for a politician tenaciously and pugnaciously in the wrong.
Edwin Percy Whipple
Genius may be almost defined as the faculty of acquiring poverty.
Edwin Percy Whipple
Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment.
Edwin Percy Whipple
The purity of the critical ermine, like that of the judicial, is often soiled by contact with politics.
Edwin Percy Whipple
What a man does with his wealth depends upon his idea of happiness. Those who draw prizes in life are apt to spend tastelessly, if not viciously not knowing that it requires as much talent to spend as to make.
Edwin Percy Whipple
The minister's brain is often the poor-box of the church.
Edwin Percy Whipple
Sin, every day, takes out a patent for some new invention.
Edwin Percy Whipple
We all originally came from the woods! it is hard to eradicate from any of us the old taste for the tattoo and the war-paint and the moment that money gets into our pockets, it somehow or another breaks out in ornaments on our person, without always giving refinement to our manners.
Edwin Percy Whipple
