Quote

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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Edwin Percy Whipple
Age: 67 †
Born: 1819
Born: March 8
Died: 1886
Died: June 16
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Writer
Gloucester
Massachusetts
Character
Manner
Gayety
Diversity
Diversities
Shape
Moat
Changing
Moats
Shapes
Mirth
Humor
Superfluous
Thousand
Earnest
Individual
Deepest

More quotes by Edwin Percy Whipple

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There is a serious and resolute egotism that makes a man interesting to his friends and formidable to his opponents.
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.
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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.
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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.
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Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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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.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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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
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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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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
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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
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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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An epigram often flashes light into regions where reason shines but dimly.
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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A thought embodied and embrained in fit words walks the earth a living being.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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The minister's brain is often the poor-box of the church.
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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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
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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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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