Every style formed elaborately on any model must be affected and straight-laced.
Edwin Percy WhippleWit implies hatred or contempt of folly and crime, produces its effects by brisk shocks of surprise, uses the whip of scorpions and the branding-iron, stabs, stings, pinches, tortures, goads, teases, corrodes, undermines.
Edwin Percy WhippleWhat a man does with his wealth depends upon his idea of happiness. Those who draw prizes in life are apt to spend tastelessly, if not viciously; not knowing that it requires as much talent to spend as to make.
Edwin Percy WhippleBut the conceit of one's self and the conceit of one's hobby are hardly more prolific of eccentricity than the conceit of one's money. Avarice, the most hateful and wolfish of all the hard, cool, callous dispositions of selfishness, has its own peculiar caprices and crotchets. The ingenuities of its meanness defy all the calculations of reason, and reach the miraculous in subtlety.
Edwin Percy WhippleWe like the fine extravagance of that philosopher who declared that no man was as rich as all men ought to be.
Edwin Percy WhippleBooks -lighthouses erected in the great sea of time -books, the precious depositories of the thoughts and creations of genius -books, by whose sorcery times past become time present, and the whole pageantry of the world's history moves in solemn procession before our eyes, -these were to visit the firesides of the humble and lavish the treasures of the intellect upon the poor.
Edwin Percy Whipple