Top 40 Robert Aris Willmott Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Education is the apprenticeship of life.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

2. “The exhibition of real strength is never grotesque. Distortion is the agony of weakness. It is the dislocated mind whose movements are spasmodic.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

3. “To study history is to study literature.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

4. “Newton found that a star, examined through a glass tarnished by smoke, was diminished into a speck of light. But no smoke ever breathed so thick a mist as envy or detraction.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

5. “A first book has some of the sweetness of a first love.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

6. “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

7. “The discovery of one star is the promise of another.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

8. “Genius finds its own road and carries its own lamp.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

9. “No canvas absorbs colour like memory.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

10. “Every fresh acquirement is another remedy against affliction and time.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

11. “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.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

12. “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

13. “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

14. “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

15. “How deep is the magic of sound may be learned by breaking some sweet verses into prose. The operation has been compared to gathering dew-drops, which shine like jewels upon the flower, but run into water in the hand. The elements remain, but the sparkle is gone.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

16. “Some imitation is involuntary and unconscious.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

17. “It is the empiric who never fails.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

18. “In literature and art memory is a synonym for invention. It is the life-blood of imagination, which faints and dies when the veins are empty.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

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

— Robert Aris Willmott

20. “Whatever is beautiful is also profitable.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

21. “Genius is nourished from within and without.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

22. “What philosopher of the schoolroom, with the mental dowry of four summers, ever questions the power of the wand that opened the dark eyes of the beautiful princess, or subtracts a single inch from the stride of seven leagues?”

— Robert Aris Willmott

23. “It is only dislocated minds whose movements are spasmodic.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

24. “Whatever is pure is also simple. It does not keep the eye on itself. The observer forgets the window in the landscape it displays. A fine style gives the view of fancy – its figures, its trees, or its palaces, – without a spot.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

25. “The fame of a battlefield grows with its years; Napoleon storming the Bridge of Lodi, and Wellington surveying the towers of Salamanca, affect us with fainter emotions than Brutus reading in his tent at Philippi, or Richard bearing down with the English chivalry upon the white armies of Saladin.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

26. “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

27. “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.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

28. “It is supposable that, in the eyes of angels, a struggle down a dark lane and a battle of Leipsic differ in nothing but excess of wickedness.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

29. “The ponderous tomes are bales of the mind’s merchandise.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

30. “The light of genius never sets, but sheds itself upon other faces, in different hues of splendor. Homer glows in the softened beauty of Virgil, and Spenser revives in the decorated learning of Gray.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

31. “The amplest knowledge has the largest faith. Ignorance is always incredulous. Tell an English cottager that the belfries of Swedish churches are crimson, and his own white steeple furnishes him with a contradiction.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

32. “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.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

33. “Talents, to strike the eye of posterity, should be concentrated. Rays, powerless while they are scattered, burn in a point.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

34. “Taste is often one of the aspects of fashion.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

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

— Robert Aris Willmott

36. “The drama is the book of the people.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

37. “We waste the power in impatience which, if, otherwise employed, might remedy the evil.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

38. “Honest fiction may be made to supplement the pulpit.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

39. “Of many large volumes the index is the best portion and the usefullest. A glance through the casement gives whatever knowledge of the interior is needful. An epitome is only a book shortened; and as a general rule, the worth increases as the size lessens.”

— Robert Aris Willmott

40. “Taste is improved by cultivation.”

— Robert Aris Willmott