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Lord Chatham and Napoleon were ns much actors as Garrick or Talma. Now, an imposing air should always be taken as evidence of imposition. Dignity is often a veil between us and the real truth of things.
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
Always
Evidence
Things
Taken
Napoleon
Lord
Imposition
Actors
Veil
Often
Imposing
Truth
Veils
Real
Dignity
Much
Air
More quotes by 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
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
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
Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment.
Edwin Percy Whipple
An epigram often flashes light into regions where reason shines but dimly.
Edwin Percy Whipple
Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.
Edwin Percy Whipple
Humor, warm and all-embracing as the sunshine, bathes its objects in a genial and abiding light.
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
A thought embodied and embrained in fit words walks the earth a living being.
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
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
Whenever you find humour, you find pathos close by its side.
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 politician weakly and amiably in the right, is no match for a politician tenaciously and pugnaciously in the wrong.
Edwin Percy Whipple
Sin, every day, takes out a patent for some new invention.
Edwin Percy Whipple
A man of letters is often a man with two natures,--one a book nature, the other a human nature. These often clash sadly.
Edwin Percy Whipple
Even in social life, it is persistency which attracts confidence, more than talents and accomplishments.
Edwin Percy Whipple
Felicity, not fluency of language, is a merit.
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
