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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.
Robert Aris Willmott
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Robert Aris Willmott
Age: 54 †
Born: 1809
Born: January 1
Died: 1863
Died: January 1
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More quotes by Robert Aris Willmott
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
Humor is the pensiveness of wit.
Robert Aris Willmott
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
The ponderous tomes are bales of the mind's merchandise.
Robert Aris Willmott
Honest fiction may be made to supplement the pulpit.
Robert Aris Willmott
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
A first book has some of the sweetness of a first love.
Robert Aris Willmott
Talents, to strike the eye of posterity, should be concentrated. Rays, powerless while they are scattered, burn in a point.
Robert Aris Willmott
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
We waste the power in impatience which, if, otherwise employed, might remedy the evil.
Robert Aris Willmott
Whatever is beautiful is also profitable.
Robert Aris Willmott
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?
Robert Aris Willmott
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
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.
Robert Aris Willmott
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
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
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
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
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
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
