Quote

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

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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
Hard
Moment
Manners
Giving
War
Woods
Eradicate
Always
Moments
Somehow
Ornaments
Money
Paint
Refinement
Another
Taste
Originally
Persons
Gets
Tattoo
Person
Break
Breaks
Without
Came
Pockets

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Cervantes shrewdly advises to lay a bridge of silver for a flying enemy.
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An epigram often flashes light into regions where reason shines but dimly.
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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.
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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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A politician weakly and amiably in the right, is no match for a politician tenaciously and pugnaciously in the wrong.
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We like the fine extravagance of that philosopher who declared that no man was as rich as all men ought to be.
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Of the three prerequisites of genius the first is soul the second is soul and the third is soul.
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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.
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The familiar writer is apt to be his own satirist. Out of his own mouth is he judged.
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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.
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Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment.
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Genius may be almost defined as the faculty of acquiring poverty.
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Whenever you find humour, you find pathos close by its side.
Edwin Percy Whipple