Richard Whately Quotes

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Some persons follow the dictates of their conscience only in the same sense in which a coachman may be said to follow the horses he is driving.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Better too much form than too little.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Good manners are a part of good morals.

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