Robert Aris Willmott Quotes

Quotes about:

• A first book has some of the sweetness of a first love.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Reading, Book, First Love

  Robert Aris Willmott (1907). “Pleasures of Literature”

  45 Copy quote

• Genius finds its own road and carries its own lamp.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Science, Lamps, Genius

  Robert Aris WILLMOTT (1851). “Pleasures,objects and advantages of literature”, p.23

  6 Copy quote

• No canvas absorbs colour like memory.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Memories, Canvas, Colour

  Robert Aris Willmott (1852). “A Journal of Summer Time in the Country”, p.188

  4 Copy quote

• It is the empiric who never fails.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Failure, Failing

  4 Copy quote

• To study history is to study literature.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  History, Literature, Study

  Robert Aris Willmott (1907). “Pleasures of Literature”

  8 Copy quote

• Whatever is beautiful is also profitable.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Beauty, Beautiful, Profitable

  Robert Aris Willmott (1907). “Pleasures of Literature”

  11 Copy quote

• Taste is improved by cultivation.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Taste, Cultivation

  7 Copy quote

• Humor is the pensiveness of wit.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Humor, Wit

  4 Copy quote

• The ponderous tomes are bales of the mind's merchandise.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Mind, Red Leaves, Merchandise

  Robert Aris Willmott (1907). “Pleasures of Literature”

  23 Copy quote

• 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

  Reading, Book, Reflection

  Robert Aris WILLMOTT (1851). “Pleasures,objects and advantages of literature”, p.104

  7 Copy quote

• It is that faculty by which we discover and enjoy the beautiful, the picturesque, and the sublime in literature, art, and nature; which recognizes a noble thought, as a virtuous mind welcomes a pure sentiment by a involuntary glow of satisfaction. But while the principle of perception is inherent in the soul, it requires a certain amount of knowledge to draw out and direct it.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Beautiful, Art, Soul

  7 Copy quote

• Talents, to strike the eye of posterity, should be concentrated. Rays, powerless while they are scattered, burn in a point.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Eye, Rays, Talent

  Robert Aris WILLMOTT (1851). “Pleasures,objects and advantages of literature”, p.46

  7 Copy quote

• History presents the pleasantest features of poetry and fiction,--the majesty of the epic, the moving accidents of the drama, the surprises and moral of the romance. Wallace is a ruder Hector; Robinson Crusoe is not stranger that Croesus; the Knights of Ashby never burnish the page of Scott with richer lights of lance and armor than the Carthaginians, winding down the Alps, cast upon Livy.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Drama, Moving, Epic

  Robert Aris Willmott (1907). “Pleasures of Literature”

  4 Copy quote

• The history of men of science has one peculiar advantage, as it shows the importance of little things in producing great results. Smeaton learned his principle of constructing a lighthouse, by noticing the trunk of a tree to be diminished from a curve to a cyclinder ... and Newton, turning an old box into a water-clock, or the yard of a house into a sundial, are examples of those habits of patient observation which scientific biography attractively recommends.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Science, Men, Curves

  24 Copy quote

• The drama is the book of the people.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Drama, Book, People

  Robert Aris Willmott (1866). “Pleasures, Objects, and Advantages of Literature”, p.87

  7 Copy quote

• Occasionally a single anecdote opens a character; biography has its comparative anatomy, and a saying or a sentiment enables the skilful hand to construct the skeleton.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Character, Skeletons, Hands

  Robert Aris Willmott (1858). “Summer Time in the Country”, p.44

  4 Copy 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

  Stars, Science, Glasses

  Robert Aris Willmott (1907). “Pleasures of Literature”

  4 Copy quote

• Association is the delight of the heart, not less than of poetry. Alison observes that an autumn sunset, with its crimson clouds, glimmering trunks of trees, and wavering tints upon the grass, seems scarcely capable of embellishment. But if in this calm and beautiful glow the chime of a distant bell steal over the fields, the bosom heaves with the sensation that Dante so tenderly describes.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Beautiful, Heart, Sunset

  Robert Aris WILLMOTT (1851). “Pleasures,objects and advantages of literature”, p.11

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Reading, Army, Years

  Robert Aris WILLMOTT (1851). “Pleasures,objects and advantages of literature”, p.12

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Science, Bridges, Skills

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Blood, Imagination, Giving

  Robert Aris Willmott (1907). “Pleasures of Literature”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Giving, Size

  Robert Aris Willmott (1866). “Pleasures, Objects, and Advantages of Literature”, p.119

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Twilight, Sunshine

  Robert Aris WILLMOTT (1851). “Pleasures,objects and advantages of literature”, p.99

  4 Copy quote

• Books, of which the principles are diseased or deformed, must be kept on the shelf of the scholar, as the man of science preserves monsters in glasses. They belong to the study of the mind's morbid anatomy, and ought to be accurately labelled. Voltaire will still be a wit, notwithstanding he is a scoffer; and we may admire the brilliant spots and eyes of the viper, if we acknowledge its venom and call it a reptile.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Book, Eye, Men

  4 Copy quote

• Taste is not stationary. It grows every day, and is improved by cultivation, as a good temper is refined by religion. In its most advanced state it takes the title of judgment. Hume quotes Fontenelle's ingenious distinction between the common watch that tells the hours, and the delicately constructed one that marks the seconds and smallest differences of time.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Differences, Taste, Titles

  Robert Aris Willmott (1907). “Pleasures of Literature”

  7 Copy quote

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