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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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Robert Aris Willmott
Age: 54 †
Born: 1809
Born: January 1
Died: 1863
Died: January 1
Author
Biographer
Religious
Writer
Dark
Wickedness
Eye
Excess
Nothing
Angels
Angel
Battle
Crime
Lane
Struggle
Lanes
Eyes
Differ

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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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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.
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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.
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What philosopher of the schoolroom, with the mental dowry of four summers, ever questions the power of the wand that opened the dark eyes of the beautiful princess, or subtracts a single inch from the stride of seven leagues?
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Humor is the pensiveness of wit.
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Criticism must never be sharpened into anatomy. The delicate veins of fancy may be traced, and the rich blood that gives bloom and health to the complexion of thought be resolved into its elements. Stop there. The life of the imagination, as of the body, disappears when we pursue it.
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The ponderous tomes are bales of the mind's merchandise.
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Whatever is beautiful is also profitable.
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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.
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Honest fiction may be made to supplement the pulpit.
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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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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.
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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
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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
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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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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.
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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.
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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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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
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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.
Robert Aris Willmott