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
Shapes
Mirth
Humor
Superfluous
Thousand
Earnest
Individual
Deepest
Character
Manner
Gayety
Diversity
Diversities
Shape
Moat
Changing
Moats

More quotes by 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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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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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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The minister's brain is often the poor-box of the church.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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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
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Humor, warm and all-embracing as the sunshine, bathes its objects in a genial and abiding light.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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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
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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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Even in social life, it is persistency which attracts confidence, more than talents and accomplishments.
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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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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Sin, every day, takes out a patent for some new invention.
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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God is glorified, not by our groans, but our thanksgivings and all good thought and good action claim a natural alliance with good cheer.
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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Whenever you find humour, you find pathos close by its side.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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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
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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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Cervantes shrewdly advises to lay a bridge of silver for a flying enemy.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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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