Quotes by Robert Aris Willmott

Robert Aris Willmott

A book becomes a mirror, with the author’s face shining over it. Talent only gives an imperfect image,–the broken glimmer of a countenance. But the features of genius remain unruffled. Time guards the shadow. Beauty, the spiritual, Venus,–whose children are the Tassos, the Spensers, the Bacons,–breathes, the magic of her love, and fixes the face forever.

Book

Children

Spiritual

A cultivated reader of history is domesticated in all families; he dines with Pericles, and sups with Titian.

Dine

History

Reader

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.

Fall

Fever

Reading

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

Book

First Love

Reading

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.

Friendly

People

Reading

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.

Art

Children

Eye

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.

Beautiful

Heart

Sunset

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.

Bridges

Science

Skills

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.

Book

Eye

Men

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.

Blood

Giving

Imagination

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Affliction

Agony

Anchors

Angel

Army

Art

Aspect

Beautiful

Beauty

Believe

Blood

Book

Bridges

Canvas

Character

Cheer

Children

Church

Color

Colour

Country

Cultivation

Curiosity

Curves

Dark

Differences

Different

Dine

Discovery

Drama

Education

Epic

Evil

Eye

Failing

Failure

Fall

Fashion

Fever

Fiction

Firmness

First Love

Flames

Flower

Friendly

Genius

Giving

Glasses

Greatness

Grief

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Quotes by Robert Aris Willmott

Robert Aris Willmott

A cultivated reader of history is domesticated in all families; he dines with Pericles, and sups with Titian.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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