Richard Whately Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

He only is exempt from failures who makes no efforts.

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Falsehood, like poison, will generally be rejected when administered alone;

but when blended with wholesome ingredients may be swallowed unperceived.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

All men wish to have truth on their side; but few to be on the side of truth.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Misgive that you may not mistake.

Even supposing there were some spiritual advantage in celibacy, it ought to be completely voluntary.

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

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

Neither human applause nor human censure is to be taken as the best of truth;

but either should set us upon testing ourselves.

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.

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

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

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.