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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.

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
Never
Imagination
Fancy
Traced
Life
Stop
Disappear
Complexion
Rich
Pursue
Anatomy
Thought
Criticism
Bloom
Body
Elements
Disappears
May
Health
Resolved
Must
Gives
Veins
Giving
Blood
Delicate
Sharpened

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Education is the apprenticeship of life
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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.
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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.
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Humor is the pensiveness of wit.
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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.
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Honest fiction may be made to supplement the pulpit.
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We waste the power in impatience which, if, otherwise employed, might remedy the evil.
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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.
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Some imitation is involuntary and unconscious.
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The ponderous tomes are bales of the mind's merchandise.
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.
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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.
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 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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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 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.
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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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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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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
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A first book has some of the sweetness of a first love.
Robert Aris Willmott