Richard Whately Quotes - Page 3

It may be worth noticing as a curious circumstance, when persons past forty before they were at all acquainted form together a very close intimacy of friendship. For grafts of old wood to take, there must be a wonderful congeniality between the trees.

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

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

It is worth noticing that those who assume an imposing demeanor and seek to pass themselves off for something beyond what they are, are not unfrequently as much underrated by some as overrated by others.

Ethical maxims are bandied about as a sort of current coin of discourse, and, being never melted down for use, those that are of base metal are never detected.

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.

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.

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.

A certain class of novels may with propriety be called fables.

Man is naturally more desirous of a quiet and approving, than of a vigilant and tender conscience--more desirous of security than of safety.

Nothing but the right can ever be expedient, since that can never be true expediency which would sacrifice a great good to a less.

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.

Eloquence is relative. One can no more pronounce on the eloquence of any composition than the wholesomeness of a medicine, without knowing for whom it is intended.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The love of admiration leads to fraud, much more than the love of commendation; but, on the other hand, the latter is much more likely to spoil our: good actions by the substitution of an inferior motive.

Great affectation and great absence of it are at first sight very similar.

As hardly anything can accidentally touch the soft clay without stamping its mark on it, so hardly any reading can interest a child, without contributing in some degree, though the book itself be afterwards totally forgotten, to form the character.

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.