Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The familiar writer is apt to be his own satirist. Out of his own mouth is he judged.
Edwin Percy Whipple
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Edwin Percy Whipple
Age: 67 †
Born: 1819
Born: March 8
Died: 1886
Died: June 16
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Writer
Gloucester
Massachusetts
Mouth
Familiar
Mouths
Writer
Satirist
Authorship
Judged
More quotes by Edwin Percy Whipple
Felicity, not fluency of language, is a merit.
Edwin Percy Whipple
Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.
Edwin Percy Whipple
A large portion of human beings live not so much in themselves as in what they desire to be. They create what is called an ideal character, in an ideal form, whose perfections compensate in some degree for the imperfections of their own.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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
Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment.
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
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
Nothing really succeeds which is not based on reality sham, in a large sense, is never successful. In the life of the individual, as in the more comprehensive life of the State, pretension is nothing and power is everything.
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
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
Sin, every day, takes out a patent for some new invention.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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.
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
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
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.
Edwin Percy Whipple
The purity of the critical ermine, like that of the judicial, is often soiled by contact with politics.
Edwin Percy Whipple
A thought embodied and embrained in fit words walks the earth a living being.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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
Humor implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic and he true, by whose light it surveys and shape s their opposites. It is a humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged inequities of existence, prompting tolerant views of life, bridging over the space which separates the lofty from the lowly, the great from the humble.
Edwin Percy Whipple
Cervantes shrewdly advises to lay a bridge of silver for a flying enemy.
Edwin Percy Whipple
