Quintessence Played

Famous quotes containing the words quintessence and/or played:

“That strange premature genius Chatterton has couched in one line the quintessence of what Voltaire has said in many pages: “Reason, a thorn in Revelation’s side.””
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)

“I had an old axe which nobody claimed, with which by spells in winter days, on the sunny side of the house, I played about the stumps which I had got out of my bean-field. As my driver prophesied when I was plowing, they warmed me twice,—once while I was splitting them, and again when they were on the fire, so that no fuel could give out more heat. As for the axe,... if it was dull, it was at least hung true.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)