A large portion of human beings live not so much in themselves as in what they desire to be. They create what is called an ideal character, in an ideal form, whose perfections compensate in some degree for the imperfections of their own. Edwin Percy Whipple More Quotes by Edwin Percy Whipple More Quotes From Edwin Percy Whipple 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 light education teacher No education deserves the name unless it develops thought, unless it pierces down to the mysterious spiritual principle of mind, and starts that into activity and growth. Edwin Percy Whipple spiritual names education There is a serious and resolute egotism that makes a man interesting to his friends and formidable to his opponents. Edwin Percy Whipple opponents men interesting Genius may be almost defined as the faculty of acquiring poverty. Edwin Percy Whipple poverty genius may Do we, mad as we all are after riches, hear often enough from the pulpit the spirit of those words in which Dean Swift, in his epitaph on the affluent and profligate Colonel Chartres, announces the small esteem of wealth in the eyes of God, from the fact of His thus lavishing it upon the meanest and basest of His creatures? Edwin Percy Whipple mad eye facts 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 poverty extravagance men Even in social life, it is persistency which attracts confidence, more than talents and accomplishments. Edwin Percy Whipple perseverance talent accomplishment 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 tattoo giving war Mirth is a Proteus, changing its shape and manner with the thousand diversities of individual character, from the most superfluous gayety to the deepest, moat earnest humor. Edwin Percy Whipple moats diversity character The saddest failures in life are those that come from not putting forth the power and will to succeed. Edwin Percy Whipple success inspirational life In activity we must find our joy as well as glory; and labor, like everything else that is good, is its own reward. Edwin Percy Whipple rewards action joy Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment. Edwin Percy Whipple irony insult compliment Knowledge, like religion, must be experienced in order to be known. Edwin Percy Whipple known order knowledge Of the three prerequisites of genius; the first is soul; the second is soul; and the third is soul. Edwin Percy Whipple genius three soul Everybody knows that fanaticism is religion caricatured; bears, indeed, about the same relation to it that a monkey bears to a man; yet, with many, contempt of fanaticism is received as a sure sign of hostility to religion. Edwin Percy Whipple monkeys bears men The minister's brain is often the "poor-box" of the church. Edwin Percy Whipple poor church brain 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 spiritual character men No language can fitly express the meanness, the baseness, the brutality, with which the world has ever treated its victims of one age and boasts of the next. Dante is worshipped at that grave to which he was hurried by persecution. Milton, in his own day, was "Mr. Milton, the blind adder, that spit his venom on the king's person"; and soon after, "the mighty orb of song." These absurd transitions from hatred to apotheosis, this recognition just at the moment when it becomes a mockery, saddens all intellectual history. Edwin Percy Whipple hatred kings song What a lesson, indeed, is all history and all life to the folly and fruitlessness of pride! The Egyptian kings had their embalmed bodies preserved in massive pyramids, to obtain an earthly immortality. In the seventeenth century they were sold as quack medicines, and now they are burnt for fuel! The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise. Edwin Percy Whipple pride pyramids kings
