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.

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

He only is exempt from failures who makes no efforts.

Happiness is no laughing matter.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

The depreciation of Christianity by indifference is a more insidious and less curable evil than infidelity itself.

Superstition is not, as has been defined, an excess of religious feeling, but a misdirection of it, an exhausting of it on vanities of man's devising.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Good manners are a part of good morals.

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?'

The more secure we feel against our liability to any error to which, in fact, we are liable, the greater must be our danger of falling into it.

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

The censure of frequent and long parentheses has led writers into the preposterous expedient of leaving out the marks by which they are indicated. It is no cure to a lame man to take away his crutches.

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

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.

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.

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.

Of metaphors, those generally conduce most to energy or vivacity of style which illustrate an intellectual by a sensible object.

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.

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

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

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

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

Preach not because you have to say something, but because you have something to say.

There is a soul of truth in error; there is a soul of good in evil.

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

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

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

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

All gaming, since it implies a desire to profit at the expense of another, involves a breach of the tenth commandment.

An instinct is a blind tendency to some mode of action, independent of any consideration, on the part of the agent, of the end to which the action leads.

Anger requires that the offender should not only be made to grieve in his turn, but to grieve for that particular wrong which has been done by him.

As an exercise of the reasoning faculties, pure mathematics is an admirable exercise, because it consists of reasoning alone and does not encumber the student with any exercise of judgment.

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.

As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works.

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.

As there are dim-sighted people who live in a sort of perpetual twilight, so there are some who, having neither much clearness of head nor a very elevated tone of morality, are perpetually haunted by suspicions of everybody and everything.

Better too much form than too little.

Christianity, contrasted with the Jewish system of emblems, is truth in the sense of reality, as substance is opposed to shadows, and, contrasted with heathen mythology, is truth as opposed to falsehood.

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.

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

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

Do you want to know the man against whom you have most reason to guard yourself? Your looking-glass will give you a very fair likeness of his face.

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.

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.

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

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.

Falsehood, like poison, will generally be rejected when administered alone; but when blended with wholesome ingredients may be swallowed unperceived.

Falsehood, like the dry-rot, flourishes the more in proportion as air and light are excluded.

Fancy, when once brought into religion, knows not where to stop. It is like one of those fiends in old stories which any one could raise, but which, when raised, could never be kept within the magic circle.

Geologists complain that when they want specimens of the common rocks of a country, they receive curious spars; just so, historians give us the extraordinary events and omit just what we want,--the every-day life of each particular time and country.

Grace is in a great measure a natural gift; elegance implies cultivation; or something of more artificial character. A rustic, uneducated girl may be graceful, but an elegant woman must be accomplished and well trained. It is the same with things as with persons; we talk of a graceful tree, but of an elegant house or other building. Animals may be graceful, but they cannot be elegant. The movements of a kitten or a young fawn are full of grace; but to call them "elegant" animals would be absurd.

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

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.

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

If all our wishes were gratified, most of our pleasures would be destroyed.

It is a good plan, with a young person of a character to be much affected by ludicrous and absurd representations, to show him plainly by examples that there is nothing which may not be thus represented. He will hardly need to be told that everything is not a mere joke.

It is also important to guard against mistaking for good-nature what is properly good-humor,--a cheerful flow of spirits and easy temper not readily annoyed, which is compatible with great selfishness.

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

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

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

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.

It is not that pearls fetch a high price because men have dived for them; but on the contrary, men have dived for them because they fetch a high price.

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

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.

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.

knowledge of our duties is the most useful part of philosophy.

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

Man, considered not merely as an organized being, but as a rational agent and a member of society, is perhaps the most wonderfully contrived, and to us the most interesting specimen of Divine wisdom that we have any knowledge of.

Misgive that you may not mistake.

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

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..

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Reason can no more influence the will, and operate as a motive, than the eyes which show a man his road can enable him to move from place to place, or that a ship provided with a compass can sail without a wind.

Some men's reputation seems like seed-wheat, which thrives best when brought from a distance.

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.

The attendant on William Rufus, who discharged at a deer an arrow, which glanced against a tree and killed the king, was no murderer, because he had no such design. And, on the other hand, a man who should lie in wait to assassinate another, and pull the trigger of a gun with that intent, would be morally a murderer, not the less though the gun should chance to miss fire.

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.

The Eastern monarch who proclaimed a reward to him who should discover a new pleasure, would have deserved well of mankind had he stipulated that it should be blameless.

The first requisite of style, not only in rhetoric, but in all compositions, is perspicuity.

The heathen mythology not only was not true, but was not even supported as true; it not only deserved no faith, but it demanded none. The very pretension to truth, the very demand of faith, were characteristic distinctions of Christianity.

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.

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

The relief that is afforded to mere want, as want, tends to increase that want.

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

There is no right faith in believing what is true, unless we believe it because it is true.

Those who relish the study of character may profit by the reading of good works of fiction, the product of well-established authors.

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

Trust, therefore, for the overcoming of a difficulty, not to long-continued study after you have once become bewildered, but to repeated trials at intervals.

Vices and frailties correct each other, like acids and alkalies. If each vicious man had but one vice, I do not know how the world could go on.

We may print, but not stereotype, our opinions.

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

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.

When men have become heartily wearied of licentious anarchy, their eagerness has been proportionately great to embrace the opposite extreme of rigorous despotism.

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

Women never reason, or, if they do, they either draw correct inferences from wrong premises, or wrong inferences from correct premises; and they always poke the fire from the top.