Edith Wharton, on her friend Walter Berry (from A Backward Glance).
“
I had never known any one so instantly and unerringly moved by all that was finest in literature. His praise of great work was like a trumpet-call. I never heard it without discovering new beauties in the work he praised; he was one of those commentators who could unseal one’s eyes. I remember him once saying to me, when I was very young ‘It is easy to see superficial resemblances between things. It takes a first-rate mind to perceive the differences underneath.’ Nothing has ever sharpened my own critical sense as much as that.
”
