The liberality of some men is but indifference clad in the garb of candor.
—Richard Whately
The power of duly appreciating little things belongs to a great mind; a narrow-minded man has it not, for to him they are great things.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Trifles
A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor’s.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Selfishness, Service, Helping
As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Faith
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, Judging, Judgment
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.
—Richard Whately
I will undertake to explain to any one the final condemnation of the wicked, if he will explain to me the existence of the wicked—if he will explain why God does not cause all those to die in the cradle of whom he foresees that, when they grow up, they will lead a sinful life.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Wickedness
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
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.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Vice
Preach not because you have to say something, but because you have something to say.
—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
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.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Ancestry
Half the truth will very often amount to absolute falsehood.
—Richard Whately
Honesty is the best policy; but he who is governed by that maxim is not an honest man.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Honesty
Unless people can be kept in the dark, it is best for those who love the truth to give them the full light.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Communication
If our religion is not true, we are bound to change it; if it is true, we are bound to propagate it.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Religion
Those who delight in the study of human nature, may improve in the knowledge of it, and in the profitable application of it by the perusal of the best selected fictions.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Fiction
The word knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things, viz., truth, proof, and conviction.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Knowledge
Manners are one of the greatest engines of influence ever given to man.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Manners
Too much attention cannot be bestowed on that important, yet much neglected branch of learning, the knowledge of man’s ignorance.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Ignorance
It is a folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do.
—Richard Whately
A man who gives his children habits of industry provides for them better than by giving them a fortune.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Habits, Children, Habit, Giving, Fortune, Work, Industry
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
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
Ten thousand of the greatest faults in our neighbors are of less consequence to us than one of the smallest in ourselves.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Faults
Many a meandering discourse one hears, in which the preacher aims at nothing, and—hits it.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Preaching
Honesty is the best policy; but he who acts only on that principle is not an honest man.—No one is habitually guided by it in practice.—An honest man is always before it, and a knave is generally behind it.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Honesty
He that is not open to conviction, is not qualified for discussion.
—Richard Whately
Woman is like the reed which bends to every breeze, but breaks not in the tempest.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Woman
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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- John Stuart Mill English Philosopher, Economist
- Herbert Spencer English Polymath
- Matthew Arnold English Poet, Critic
- Jeremy Bentham British Philosopher, Economist
- John Maynard Keynes English Economist
- William of Ockham English Philosopher, Polemicist
- Duke Ellington American Musician
- Norman Mailer American Novelist, Journalist
- Maria Mitchell American Astronomer
- Benjamin Whichcote British Religious Figure
Leave a Reply