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

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

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Whatever is pure is also simple. It does not keep the eye on itself. The observer forgets the window in the landscape it displays. A fine style gives the view of fancy--its figures, its trees, or its palaces,--without a spot.
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The exhibition of real strength is never grotesque. Distortion is the agony of weakness. It is the dislocated mind whose movements are spasmodic.
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A cultivated reader of history is domesticated in all families he dines with Pericles, and sups with Titian.
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Education is the apprenticeship of life
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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
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We waste the power in impatience which, if, otherwise employed, might remedy the evil.
Robert Aris Willmott
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Some imitation is involuntary and unconscious.
Robert Aris Willmott
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The light of genius never sets, but sheds itself upon other faces, in different hues of splendor. Homer glows in the softened beauty of Virgil, and Spenser revives in the decorated learning of Gray.
Robert Aris Willmott
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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
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Many books belong to sunshine, and should be read out of doors. Clover, violets, and hedge roses breathe from their leaves they are most lovable in cool lanes, along field paths, or upon stiles overhung by hawthorn, while the blackbird pipes, and the nightingale bathes its brown feathers in the twilight copse.
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Talents, to strike the eye of posterity, should be concentrated. Rays, powerless while they are scattered, burn in a point.
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Whatever is beautiful is also profitable.
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Humor is the pensiveness of wit.
Robert Aris Willmott
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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A first book has some of the sweetness of a first love.
Robert Aris Willmott
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The ponderous tomes are bales of the mind's merchandise.
Robert Aris Willmott