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Pretension is nothing power is everything.

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
Everything
Nothing
Pretension
Power

More quotes by Edwin Percy Whipple

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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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Knowledge, like religion, must be experienced in order to be known.
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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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What does competency in the long run mean? It means to all reasonable beings, cleanliness of person, decency of dress, courtesy of manners, opportunities for education, the delights of leisure, and the bliss of giving.
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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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A thought embodied and embrained in fit words walks the earth a living being.
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Even in social life, it is persistency which attracts confidence, more than talents and accomplishments.
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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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An epigram often flashes light into regions where reason shines but dimly.
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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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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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Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time.
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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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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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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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.
Edwin Percy Whipple
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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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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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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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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