Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Richard Whately (English Philosopher, Theologian)

Richard Whately (1787–1863) was an English academic, rhetorician, logician, philosopher, social reformer, and theologian who also served as Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin. He was a leading Broad Churchman and one of the first critics to acknowledge Jane Austen’s literary talents.

Born in London, Whately was the son of a clergyman. He was educated at Oriel College-Oxford and took holy orders. While at Oxford, he wrote his satiric Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Bonaparte (1819,) in which he criticized the rigid application of logic to the Bible by establishing that the same techniques used to cast doubt on the miracles would also leave the reality of Napoleon open to question.

In 1825, Whately became principal of St. Alban Hall-Oxford and served as a professor of political economy 1829–31. His treatise Elements of Logic (1826) became a definitive textbook for several generations, and his Elements of Rhetoric (1828) went into many editions. He contributed to the Quarterly Review 1820–21.

Becoming archbishop of Dublin in 1931, Whately became active in Irish cultural and political life, founding a professorship of political economy at Dublin (1832) and the Statistical Society (1847,) serving as president (1835–36) of the royal commission on the Irish poor, and involving himself in educational reform at all levels. He published many works on philosophy and religion, supporting Broad Church views, but his reputation rested mainly on his Logic and Rhetoric.

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Richard Whately

Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.
Richard Whately
Topics: Curiosity

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

Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.
Richard Whately
Topics: Losing, Morning, Loss, Losers

Neither human applause nor human censure is to be taken as the test of truth; but either should set us upon testing ourselves.
Richard Whately
Topics: Applause

Sophistry is like a window curtain—it pleases as an ornament, but its true use is to keep out the light.
Richard Whately

Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry always gets the best of the argument.
Richard Whately
Topics: Arguments, Argument

That is, in a great degree, true of all men, which was said of the Athenians, that they were like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one.
Richard Whately
Topics: Public, Men

A confident expectation that no argument will be adduced that will change our opinions is very different from a resolution that none ever shall. We may print but not stereotype our opinions.
Richard Whately
Topics: Opinion

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.
Richard Whately

A little learning is a dangerous thing, and yet it is what all must attain before they can arrive at great learning; it is the utmost acquisition of those who know the most in comparison of what they do not know.
Richard Whately
Topics: Learning

It is observed by Homer that a man loses half his virtue the day he becomes a slave; he might have added, with truth, that he is likely to lose more than half when he becomes a slave-master.
Richard Whately
Topics: Slavery

In our judgment of human transactions, the law of optics is reversed; we see the most indistinctly the objects which are close around us.
Richard Whately
Topics: Judges, Judgment, Judging

He only is exempt from failures who makes no effort.
Richard Whately
Topics: Failure, Failures, Mistakes

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

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.
Richard Whately
Topics: Superstition

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.
Richard Whately
Topics: Religion

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..
Richard Whately
Topics: Manners

The over-formal often impede, and sometimes frustrate business by a dilatory, tedious, circuitous, and fussy way of conducting the simplest transactions. They have been compared to a dog which cannot lie down till he has made three circuits round the spot.
Richard Whately
Topics: Manners

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.
Richard Whately

It is remarkable that great affectation and great absence of it (unconsciousness) are at first sight very similar; they are both apt to produce singularity
Richard Whately
Topics: Affectation

All frauds, like the wall daubed with untempered mortar, with which men think to buttress up an edifice, always tend to the decay of what they are devised to support.
Richard Whately

Some men’s reputation seems like seed-wheat, which thrives best when brought from a distance.
Richard Whately
Topics: Reputation

He that is not open to conviction, is not qualified for discussion.
Richard Whately

Most precepts that are given are so general that they cannot be applied, except by an exercise of as much discretion as would be sufficient to frame them.
Richard Whately

Historians give us the extraordinary events, and omit just what we want, the everyday life of each particular time and country.
Richard Whately
Topics: History

It is seldom that a man labors well in his minor department unless he over-rates it.—It is lucky for us that the bee does not look upon the honeycomb in the same light we do.
Richard Whately

Manners are one of the greatest engines of influence ever given to man.
Richard Whately
Topics: Manners

The dangers of knowledge are not to be compared with the dangers of ignorance. Man is more likely to miss his way in darkness than in twilight; in twilight than in full sun.
Richard Whately
Topics: Knowledge

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?”
Richard Whately
Topics: Beliefs, Truth

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.
Richard Whately
Topics: Self-Control

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