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In our judgment of human transactions, the law of optics is reversed, we see most dimly the objects which are close around us.

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
Humans
Reversed
Transactions
Judgment
Close
Objects
Law
Around
Optics
Human
Dimly

More quotes by Richard Whately

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Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.
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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.
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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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Galileo probably would have escaped persecution if his discoveries could have been disproved.
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The love of admiration leads to fraud, much more than the love of commendation but, on the other hand, the latter is much more likely to spoil our: good actions by the substitution of an inferior motive.
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As there are dim-sighted people who live in a sort of perpetual twilight, so there are some who, having neither much clearness of head nor a very elevated tone of morality, are perpetually haunted by suspicions of everybody and everything.
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.
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The first requisite of style, not only in rhetoric, but in all compositions, is perspicuity.
Richard Whately
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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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The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.
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Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry gets the best of the argument.
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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.
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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Controversy, though always an evil in itself, is sometimes a necessary evil.
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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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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.
Richard Whately
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A fanatic, either, religious or political, is the subject of strong delusions.
Richard Whately
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All frauds, like the wall daubed with untempered mortar ... always tend to the decay of what they are devised to support.
Richard Whately
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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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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.
Richard Whately