Quote

Newton found that a star, examined through a glass tarnished by smoke, was diminished into a speck of light. But no smoke ever breathed so thick a mist as envy or detraction.

Robert Aris Willmott

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Robert Aris Willmott
Age: 54 †
Born: 1809
Born: January 1
Died: 1863
Died: January 1
Author
Biographer
Religious
Writer
Breathed
Envy
Examined
Smoke
Diminished
Star
Newton
Stars
Mist
Detraction
Science
Thick
Tarnished
Found
Glass
Speck
Light
Specks
Ever
Glasses

More quotes by Robert Aris Willmott

Image
It is supposable that, in the eyes of angels, a struggle down a dark lane and a battle of Leipsic differ in nothing but excess of wickedness.
Robert Aris Willmott
Image
The advice of a scholar, whose piles of learning were set on fire by imagination, is never to be forgotten. Proportion an hour's reflection to an hour's reading, and so dispirit the book into the student.
Robert Aris Willmott
Image
The amplest knowledge has the largest faith. Ignorance is always incredulous. Tell an English cottager that the belfries of Swedish churches are crimson, and his own white steeple furnishes him with a contradiction.
Robert Aris Willmott
Image
The exhibition of real strength is never grotesque. Distortion is the agony of weakness. It is the dislocated mind whose movements are spasmodic.
Robert Aris Willmott
Image
The drama embraces and applies all the beauties and decorations of poetry. The sister arts attend and adorn it. Painting, architecture, and music are her handmaids. The costliest lights of a people's intellect burn at her show. All ages welcome her.
Robert Aris Willmott
Image
Humor is the pensiveness of wit.
Robert Aris Willmott
Image
How deep is the magic of sound may be learned by breaking some sweet verses into prose. The operation has been compared to gathering dew-drops, which shine like jewels upon the flower, but run into water in the hand. The elements remain, but the sparkle is gone.
Robert Aris Willmott
Image
A good reader is nearly as rare as a good writer. People bring their prejudices, whether friendly or adverse. They are lamp and spectacles, lighting and magnifying the page.
Robert Aris Willmott
Image
The gloomy recess of an ecclesiastical library is like a harbor, into which a far-traveling curiosity has sailed with its freight, and cast anchor. The ponderous tomes are bales of the mind's merchandise. Odors of distant countries and times steal from the red leaves, the swelling ridges of vellum, and the titles in tarnished gold.
Robert Aris Willmott
Image
The ponderous tomes are bales of the mind's merchandise.
Robert Aris Willmott
Image
Of many large volumes the index is the best portion and the usefullest. A glance through the casement gives whatever knowledge of the interior is needful. An epitome is only a book shortened and as a general rule, the worth increases as the size lessens.
Robert Aris Willmott
Image
Education is the apprenticeship of life
Robert Aris Willmott
Image
From numberless books the fluttering reader, idle and inconstant, bears away the bloom that only clings to the outer leaf but genius has its nectaries, delicate glands, and secrecies of sweetness, and upon these the thoughtful mind must settle in its labor, before the choice perfume of fancy and wisdom is drawn forth.
Robert Aris Willmott
Image
A discursive student is almost certain to fall into bad company. Ten minutes with a French novel or a German rationalist have sent a reader away with a fever for life.
Robert Aris Willmott
Image
Attention makes the genius all learning, fancy, science and skills depend upon it. Newton traced his discoveries to it. It builds bridges, opens new worlds, heals diseases, carries on the business of the world. Without it taste is useless, and the beauties of literature unobserved.
Robert Aris Willmott
Image
Honest fiction may be made to supplement the pulpit.
Robert Aris Willmott
Image
A first book has some of the sweetness of a first love.
Robert Aris Willmott
Image
The fame of a battlefield grows with its years Napoleon storming the Bridge of Lodi, and Wellington surveying the towers of Salamanca, affect us with fainter emotions than Brutus reading in his tent at Philippi, or Richard bearing down with the English chivalry upon the white armies of Saladin.
Robert Aris Willmott
Image
Talents, to strike the eye of posterity, should be concentrated. Rays, powerless while they are scattered, burn in a point.
Robert Aris Willmott
Image
A cultivated reader of history is domesticated in all families he dines with Pericles, and sups with Titian.
Robert Aris Willmott