Richard Whately famous quotes

To know your ruling passion, examine your castles in the air.
-- Richard Whately

#Passion #Air #Castles

Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.
-- Richard Whately

#Memories #Parent #Curiosity

Manners are one of the greatest engines of influence ever given to man.
-- Richard Whately

#Men #Influence #Manners

A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.
-- Richard Whately

#Selfish #Helping Others #Men

Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.
-- Richard Whately

#Good Morning #Morning #Isolation

It is generally true that all that is required to make men unmindful of what they owe to God for any blessing, is, that they should receive that blessing often and regularly.
-- Richard Whately

#Men #Blessing #Should

To be always thinking about your manners is not the way to make them good; the very perfection of manners is not to think about yourself.
-- Richard Whately

#Thinking About You #Perfection #Way

It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.
-- Richard Whately

#Wisdom #Rebuilding #Neglect

Galileo probably would have escaped persecution if his discoveries could have been disproved.
-- Richard Whately

#Discovery #Persecution

It is folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do.
-- Richard Whately

#Men #May #Folly

Men are like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one.
-- Richard Whately

#Men #Sheep #Driven

One way in which fools succeed where wise men fail is that through ignorance of the danger they sometimes go coolly about a hazardous business.
-- Richard Whately

#Wise #Ignorance #Men

Proverbs accordingly are somewhat analogous to those medical Formulas which, being in frequent use, are kept ready-made-up in the chemists’ shops, and which often save the framing of a distinct Prescription.
-- Richard Whately

#Use #Medical #Made

No one complains of the rules of Grammar as fettering Language; because it is understood that correct use is not founded on Grammar, but Grammar on correct use. A just system of Logic or of Rhetoric is analogous, in this respect, to Grammar..
-- Richard Whately

#Complaining #Use #Logic

When a man says he wants to work, what he means is that he wants wages.
-- Richard Whately

#Mean #Men #Wages

The power of duly appreciating little things belongs to a great mind...
-- Richard Whately

#Gratitude #Appreciate #Mind

The happiest lot for a man, as far as birth is concerned, is that it should be such as to give him but little occasion to think much about it.
-- Richard Whately

#Men #Thinking #Giving

To teach one who has no curiosity to learn, is to sow a field without ploughing it.
-- Richard Whately

#Science #Curiosity #Fields

The tendency of party spirit has ever been to disguise and propagate and support error.
-- Richard Whately

#Party #Errors #Support

Party spirit enlists a man's virtues in the cause of his vices.
-- Richard Whately

#Party #Men #Causes

All frauds, like the wall daubed with untempered mortar ... always tend to the decay of what they are devised to support.
-- Richard Whately

#Wall #Support #Decay

Persecution is not wrong because it is cruel; but it is cruel because it is wrong.
-- Richard Whately

#Persecution

Of Rhetoric various definitions have been given by different writers; who, however, seem not so much to have disagreed in their conceptions of the nature of the same thing, as to have had different things in view while they employed the same term.
-- Richard Whately

#Views #Different #Definitions

Concerning the utility of Rhetoric, it is to be observed that it divides itself into two; first, whether Oratorical skill be, on the whole, a public benefit, or evil; and secondly, whether any artificial system of Rules is conducive to the attainment of that skill.
-- Richard Whately

#Skills #Two #Evil

A fanatic, either, religious or political, is the subject of strong delusions.
-- Richard Whately

#Religious #Strong #Political

That is suitable to a man, in point of ornamental expense, not which he can afford to have, but which he can afford to lose.
-- Richard Whately

#Men #Extravagance #Expenses

It may be said, almost without qualification, that true wisdom consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies. Without the former quality, knowledge of the past is unobstructive: without the latter it is deceptive.
-- Richard Whately

#Inspirational #Past #Perception

A man will never change his mind if he have no mind to change.
-- Richard Whately

#Men #Mind #Never Change

As one may bring himself to believe almost anything he is inclined to believe, it makes all the difference whether we begin or end with the inquiry, 'What is truth?'
-- Richard Whately

#Truth #Believe #Differences

Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry gets the best of the argument.
-- Richard Whately

#Food #Tables #Dinner

He who is not aware of his ignorance will be only misled by his knowledge.
-- Richard Whately

#Ignorance #Intelligence #Misled

Everyone wishes to have truth on his side, but not everyone wishes to be on the side of truth.
-- Richard Whately

#Truth #Wish #Sides

Unless people can be kept in the dark, it is best for those who love the truth to give them the full light.
-- Richard Whately

#Communication #Dark #Light

He only is exempt from failures who makes no efforts.
-- Richard Whately

#Failure #Effort

Honesty is the best policy; but he who is governed by that maxim is not an honest man.
-- Richard Whately

#Honesty #Men #Policy

In our judgment of human transactions, the law of optics is reversed, we see most dimly the objects which are close around us.
-- Richard Whately

#Law #Optics #Judgment

The best security against revolution is in constant correction of abuses and the introduction of needed improvements. It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.
-- Richard Whately

#Abuse #Rebuilding #Revolution

To follow imperfect, uncertain, or corrupted traditions, in order to avoid erring in our own judgment, is but to exchange one danger for another.
-- Richard Whately

#Order #Erring #Imperfect

The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.
-- Richard Whately

#Understanding #Three #Conviction

Happiness is no laughing matter.
-- Richard Whately

#Laughing #Matter

It is an awful, an appalling thought, that we may be, this moment and every moment, in the presence of malignant spirits.
-- Richard Whately

#Awful #May #Spirit

Not in books only, nor yet in oral discourse, but often also in words there are boundless stores of moral and historic truth, and no less of passion and imagination laid up, from which lessons of infinite worth may be derived.
-- Richard Whately

#Book #Passion #Imagination

It is one thing to wish to have truth on our side, and another to wish sincerely to be on the side of truth.
-- Richard Whately

#Wish #Sides #Sincerely

Neither human applause nor human censure is to be taken as the best of truth; but either should set us upon testing ourselves.
-- Richard Whately

#Truth #Taken #Applause

Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
-- Richard Whately

#Men #Law #Suffering

A man who gives his children habits of industry provides for them better than by giving them fortune.
-- Richard Whately

#Children #Men #Giving