Richard Whately Quotes

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

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

Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sophistry, like poison, is at once detected and nauseated, when presented to us in a concentrated form; but a fallacy which, when stated barely in a few sentences, would not deceive a child, may deceive half the world, if diluted in a quarto volume.

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?'

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Though not always called upon to condemn ourselves, it is always safe to suspect ourselves.

Some persons resemble certain trees, such as the nut, which flowers in February and ripens its fruit in September; or the juniper and the arbutus; which take a whole year or more to perfect their fruit; and others, the cherry, which takes between two an three months.

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.

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

He only is exempt from failures who makes no efforts.

Persecution is not wrong because it is cruel; but it is cruel because it is wrong.

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

Habits are formed, not at one stroke, but gradually and insensibly; so that, unless vigilant care be employed, a great change may come over the character without our being conscious of any.

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

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.

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

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.

When any person of really eminent virtue becomes the object of envy, the clamor and abuse by which he is assailed is but the sign and accompaniment of his success in doing service to the public. And if he is a truly wise man, he will take no more notice of it than the moon does of the howling of the dogs. Her only answer to them is to shine on.

It is quite possible, and not uncommon, to read most laboriously, even so as to get by heart the words of a book, without really studying it at all,--that is, without employing the thoughts on the subject.

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.

Controversy, though always an evil in itself, is sometimes a necessary evil.

Falsehood is difficult to be maintained. When the materials of a building are solid blocks of stone, very rude architecture will suffice; but a structure of rotten materials needs the most careful adjustment to make it stand at all.

It is a remarkable circumstance in reference to cunning persons that they are often deficient not only in comprehensive, far-sighted wisdom, but even in prudent, cautious circumspection.

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

As a science, logic institutes an analysis of the process of the mind in reasoning, and investigating the principles on which argumentation is conducted; as an art, it furnishes such rules as may be derived from those principles, for guarding against erroneous deductions.

Woman is like the reed which bends to every breeze, but breaks not in the tempest.

As the telescope is not a substitute for, but an aid to, our sight, so revelation is not designed to supersede the use of reason, but to supply its deficiencies.

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

Men first make up their minds (and the smaller the mind the sooner made up), and then seek for the reasons; and if they chance to stumble upon a good reason, of course they do not reject it. But though they are right, they are only right by chance.

Of all hostile feelings, envy is perhaps the hardest to be subdued, because hardly any one owns it even to himself, but looks out for one pretext after another to justify his hostility.

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.

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

It is folly to shiver over last year's snow.

Misgive that you may not mistake.

He that is not open to conviction is not qualified for discussion.