Edwin P Whipple Quotes & Sayings

A true teacher should penetrate to whatever is vital in his pupil, and develop that by the light and heat of his own intelligence. — Edwin Percy Whipple

Wit is an unexpected explosion of thought. — Edwin Percy Whipple

Talent is full of thoughts, Genius is thought. Talent is a cistern, Genius a fountain. — Edwin Percy Whipple

True wisdom, indeed, springs from the wide brain which is fed from the deep heart; and it is only when age warms its withering conceptions at the memory of its youthful fire, when it makes experience serve aspiration, and knowledge illumine the difficult paths through which thoughts thread their way into facts,
it is only then that age becomes broadly and nobly wise. — Edwin Percy Whipple

Every style formed elaborately on any model must be affected and straight-laced. — Edwin Percy Whipple

Humor implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic and he true, by whose light it surveys and shape s their opposites. It is a humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged inequities of existence, prompting tolerant views of life, bridging over the space which separates the lofty from the lowly, the great from the humble. — Edwin Percy Whipple

Character is the spiritual body of the person, and represents the individualization of vital experience, the conversion of unconscious things into self-conscious men. — Edwin Percy Whipple

The inborn geniality of some people amounts to genius. — Edwin Percy Whipple

Wit implies hatred or contempt of folly and crime, produces its effects by brisk shocks of surprise, uses the whip of scorpions and the branding-iron, stabs, stings, pinches, tortures, goads, teases, corrodes, undermines. — Edwin Percy Whipple

We like the fine extravagance of that philosopher who declared that no man was as rich as all men ought to be. — Edwin Percy Whipple

The strife of politics tends to unsettle the calmest understanding, and ulcerate the most benevolent heart. There are no bigotries or absurdities too gross for parties to create or adopt under the stimulus of political passions. — Edwin Percy Whipple

The essence of the ludicrous consists in surprise,
in unexpected terms of feeling and explosions of thought,
often bringing dissimilar things together with a shock; as when some wit called Boyle, the celebrated philosopher, the father of chemistry and brother of the Earl of Cork. — Edwin Percy Whipple

A nation may be in a tumult to-day for a thought which the timid Erasmus placidly penned in his study more than two centuries ago. — Edwin Percy Whipple

The familiar writer is apt to be his own satirist. Out of his own mouth is he judged. — Edwin Percy Whipple

Cervantes shrewdly advises to lay a bridge of silver for a flying enemy. — Edwin Percy Whipple

Knowledge, like religion, must be experienced in order to be known. — Edwin Percy Whipple

Of the three prerequisites of genius; the first is soul; the second is soul; and the third is soul. — Edwin Percy Whipple

Nature and society are so replete with startling contrasts that wit often consists in the mere statement and comparison of facts, as when Hume says that the ancient Muscovites wedded their wives with a whip instead of a ring. — Edwin Percy Whipple

A writer who attempts to live on the manufacture of his imagination is continually coquetting with starvation. — Edwin Percy Whipple

We all originally came from the woods! it is hard to eradicate from any of us the old taste for the tattoo and the war-paint; and the moment that money gets into our pockets, it somehow or another breaks out in ornaments on our person, without always giving refinement to our manners. — Edwin Percy Whipple

The wise men of old have sent most of their morality down the stream of time in the light skiff of apothegm or epigram; and the proverbs of nations, which embody the commonsense of nations, have the brisk concussion of the most sparkling wit. — Edwin Percy Whipple

Books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time. — Edwin Percy Whipple

Genius is not a single power, but a combination of great powers. It reasons, but it is not reasoning; it judges, but it is not judgment; imagines, but it is not imagination; it feels deeply and fiercely, but it is not passion. It is neither, because it is all. — Edwin Percy Whipple

A politician weakly and amiably in the right is no match for a politician tenaciously and pugnaciously in the wrong. You cannot, by tying an opinion, to a man's tongue, make him the representative of that opinion; and at the close of any battle for principles, his name will be found neither among the dead nor among the wounded, but among the missing. — Edwin Percy Whipple

Genius may be almost defined as the faculty of acquiring poverty. — Edwin Percy Whipple

Dignity is often a veil between us and the real truth of things. — Edwin Percy Whipple

The universal line of distinction between the strong and the weak is that one persists; the other hesitates, falters, trifles, and at last collapses or caves in. — Edwin Percy Whipple

There is a serious and resolute egotism that makes a man interesting to his friends and formidable to his opponents. — Edwin Percy Whipple

The bitterest satires and noblest eulogies on married life have come from poets. — Edwin Percy Whipple

There is a natural disposition with us to judge an author's personal character by the character of his works. We find it difficult to understand the common antithesis of a good writer and a bad man. — Edwin Percy Whipple