R. Willmott Quotes
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.
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.
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.
We waste the power in impatience which, if, otherwise employed, might remedy the evil.
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.
The exhibition of real strength is never grotesque. Distortion is the agony of weakness. It is the dislocated mind whose movements are spasmodic.
Talents, to strike the eye of posterity, should be concentrated. Rays, powerless while they are scattered, burn in a point.
A cultivated reader of history is domesticated in all families; he dines with Pericles, and sups with Titian.
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.
Some gifted adventurer is always sailing round the world of art and science, to bring home costly merchandise from every port.
In literature and art memory is a synonym for invention. It is the life-blood of imagination, which faints and dies when the veins are empty.
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.
