Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Edwin Percy Whipple

Quote by Edwin Percy Whipple

“Sydney Smith playfully says that common sense was invented by Socrates, that philosopher having been one of its most conspicuous exemplars in conducting the contest of practical sagacity against stupid prejudice and illusory beliefs.”

Quote by Edwin Percy Whipple

Work

Success and Its Conditions

This book explores the multifaceted nature of success, analyzing the conditions under which individuals and groups achieve their goals. It considers psychological, social, economic, and environmental elements that enable or hinder accomplishment. The text likely addresses questions of merit, opportunity, persistence, and the interplay between personal effort and external circumstances. Rather than offering a single formula, it probably presents a nuanced view of how different contexts shape outcomes across diverse fields such as business, education, arts, and public life. The work may draw on historical examples, contemporary research, and philosophical perspectives to illuminate why some efforts flourish while others falter, and how societies define and distribute recognition for achievement. more

Author

Edwin Percy Whipple

Edwin Percy Whipple was an American essayist known for his significant contributions to 19th-century American literature. Born on March 8, 1819, in Boston, Massachusetts, Whipple passed away on June 16, 1886. His essays, which often delved into themes of morality and social issues, established him as a prominent figure in the literary world. more

You May Also Like

“But 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.”

“Men educate each other in reason by contact or collision, and keep each other sane by the very conflict of their separate hobbies. Society as a whole is the deadly enemy of the particular crotchet of each, and solitude is almost the only condition in which the acorn of conceit can grow to the oak of perfect self-delusion.”

“The very large, very respectable, and very knowing class of misanthropes who rejoice in the name of grumblers,--persons who are so sure that the world is going to ruin, that they resent every attempt to comfort them as an insult to their sagacity, and accordingly seek their chief consolation in being inconsolable, their chief pleasure in being displeased.”