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

• Taste is improved by cultivation.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Taste, Cultivation

  7 Copy quote

• Whatever is beautiful is also profitable.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Beauty, Beautiful, Profitable

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

  11 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

• Humor is the pensiveness of wit.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Humor, Wit

  4 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

• Romance is the truth of imagination and boyhood. Homer's horses clear the world at a bound. The child's eye needs no horizon to its prospect. The oriental tale is not too vast. Pearls dropping from trees are only falling leaves in autumn. The palace that grew up in a night merely awakens a wish to live in it. The impossibilities of fifty years are the commonplaces of five.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Horse, Children, Fall

  Robert Aris WILLMOTT (1851). “Pleasures,objects and advantages of literature”, p.60

  4 Copy quote

• Genius is nourished from within and without.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Science, Genius

  4 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

• 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

  Art, Drama, Light

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

  7 Copy quote

• Joy and grief are never far apart. In the same street the shutters of one house are closed, while the curtains of the next are brushed by shadow of the dance. A wedding-party returns from church, and a funeral winds to its door. The smiles and the sadness of life are the tragi-comedy of Shakespeare. Gladness and sighs brighten and dim the mirror he beholds.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Party, Grief, Sadness

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

  7 Copy quote

• Some gifted adventurer is always sailing round the world of art and science, to bring home costly merchandise from every port.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Art, Home, Science

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

  4 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

• Art, not less eloquently than literature, teaches her children to venerate the single eye. Remember Matsys. His representations of miser-life are breathing. A forfeited bond twinkles in the hard smile. But follow him to an altar-piece. His Apostle has caught a stray tint from his usurer. Features of exquisite beauty are seen and loved; but the old nature of avarice frets under the glow of devotion. Pathos staggers on the edge of farce.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Art, Children, Eye

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

  7 Copy quote

• Winckelmann wished to live with a work of art as a friend. The saying is true of pen and pencil. Fresh lustre shoots from Lycidas in a twentieth perusal. The portraits of Clarendon are mellowed by every year of reflection.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Art, Reflection, Years

  Robert Aris WILLMOTT (1851). “Pleasures,objects and advantages of literature”, p.91

  7 Copy quote

• The discovery of one star is the promise of another.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Stars, Science, Discovery

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

  4 Copy quote

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