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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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Edwin Percy Whipple
Age: 67 †
Born: 1819
Born: March 8
Died: 1886
Died: June 16
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Writer
Gloucester
Massachusetts
Party
Absurdity
Calmest
Understanding
Gross
Unsettle
Political
Tends
Absurdities
Heart
Passions
Benevolent
Parties
Adopt
Create
Stimulus
Passion
Bigotry
Politics
Strife

More quotes by Edwin Percy Whipple

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Whenever you find humour, you find pathos close by its side.
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There is a serious and resolute egotism that makes a man interesting to his friends and formidable to his opponents.
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Sin, every day, takes out a patent for some new invention.
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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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The purity of the critical ermine, like that of the judicial, is often soiled by contact with politics.
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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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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.
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An epigram often flashes light into regions where reason shines but dimly.
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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.
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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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Humor, warm and all-embracing as the sunshine, bathes its objects in a genial and abiding light.
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Genius may be almost defined as the faculty of acquiring poverty.
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The minister's brain is often the poor-box of the church.
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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.
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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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Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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Felicity, not fluency of language, is a merit.
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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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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Even in social life, it is persistency which attracts confidence, more than talents and accomplishments.
Edwin Percy Whipple