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

Richard Whately

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Richard Whately
Age: 76 †
Born: 1787
Born: February 1
Died: 1863
Died: October 8
Economist
Philosopher
Priest
Theologian
London
England
Castles
Examine
Ruling
Air
Building
Passion

More quotes by Richard Whately

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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.
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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.
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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.
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If all our wishes were gratified, most of our pleasures would be destroyed.
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All gaming, since it implies a desire to profit at the expense of another, involves a breach of the tenth commandment.
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It may be worth noticing as a curious circumstance, when persons past forty before they were at all acquainted form together a very close intimacy of friendship. For grafts of old wood to take, there must be a wonderful congeniality between the trees.
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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
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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.
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Men are like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one.
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A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.
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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.
Richard Whately
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He who is not aware of his ignorance will be only misled by his knowledge.
Richard Whately
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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.
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It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.
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Even supposing there were some spiritual advantage in celibacy, it ought to be completely voluntary.
Richard Whately
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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.
Richard Whately
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Honesty is the best policy but he who is governed by that maxim is not an honest man.
Richard Whately
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A fanatic, either, religious or political, is the subject of strong delusions.
Richard Whately
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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
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Women never reason, or, if they do, they either draw correct inferences from wrong premises, or wrong inferences from correct premises and they always poke the fire from the top.
Richard Whately