Edwin Percy Whipple Quotes
1819–1886 United States
Edwin Percy Whipple (March 8, 1819 – June 16, 1886) was an American literary critic and essayist from Massachusetts.
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Random Edwin Percy Whipple quote
102 quotes
My Lord Anson, at the Admiralty, sends word to Chatham, then confined to his chamber by one of his most violent attacks of the gout, that it is impossible for him to fit out a naval expedition within the period to which he is limited. “Impossible!” cried Chatham, glaring at the messenger; “who talks to me of impossibilities?” Then starting to his feet, and forcing out great drops of agony on his brow with the excruciating torment of the effort, he exclaimed, “Tell Lord Anson that he serves under a minister who treads on impossibilities!”
Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)
Talent repeats; genius creates. Talent is a cistern; genius a fountain. Talent deals with the actual, with discovered and realized truths, analyzing, arranging, combining, applying positive knowledge, and in action looking to precedents; genius deals with the possible, creates new combinations, discovers new laws, and acts from an insight into principles. Talent jogs to conclusions to which genius takes giant leaps. Talent accumulates knowledge, and has it packed up in the memory; genius assimilates it with its own substance, grows with every new accession, and converts knowledge into power. Talent gives out what it has taken in; genius what has risen from its unsounded wells of living thought. Talent, in difficult situations, strives to untie knots, which genius instantly cuts with one swift decision. Talent is full of thoughts, genius of thought; one has definite acquisitions, the other indefinite power.
Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)