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
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 Anglican Priest
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