D. G. Rossetti.
Although Rossetti was not a classical student, he seems here to have arrived at the Platonic idea of an abstract Beauty, of whose essence are all beautiful things, “sea or sky or woman.” Love and death, terror and mystery guard her, as a goddess on her throne, and all lovers of the beautiful are worshippers at her shrine.
Thinking is only a dream of feeling; a dead feeling; a pale-grey, feeble life.
Novalis.
A whetstone cannot cut, but it makes iron sharp, and gives it a keen edge.
Isocrates (436-338 B.C.).
This is quoted in Plutarch’s Lives. Isocrates was asked why he taught rhetoric so much and yet spoke so rarely; and this was his reply. Horace (Ars Poetica 304) playfully says that he is no longer able to write verses but he will teach others to write, adding “a whetstone is not used for cutting, but is used for sharpening steel nevertheless.”
The career of Isocrates, “that old man eloquent,”[31] is extremely interesting. He preserved his energy and his influence to the end of his long life of 98 years.