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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
Judgment
Close
Objects
Law
Around
Optics
Human
Dimly
Humans
Reversed
Transactions
More quotes by Richard Whately
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
He who is not aware of his ignorance will be only misled by his knowledge.
Richard Whately
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
All frauds, like the wall daubed with untempered mortar ... always tend to the decay of what they are devised to support.
Richard Whately
As hardly anything can accidentally touch the soft clay without stamping its mark on it, so hardly any reading can interest a child, without contributing in some degree, though the book itself be afterwards totally forgotten, to form the character.
Richard Whately
A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.
Richard Whately
All gaming, since it implies a desire to profit at the expense of another, involves a breach of the tenth commandment.
Richard Whately
The more secure we feel against our liability to any error to which, in fact, we are liable, the greater must be our danger of falling into it.
Richard Whately
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
As a science, logic institutes an analysis of the process of the mind in reasoning, and investigating the principles on which argumentation is conducted as an art, it furnishes such rules as may be derived from those principles, for guarding against erroneous deductions.
Richard Whately
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.
Richard Whately
He only is exempt from failures who makes no efforts.
Richard Whately
The first requisite of style, not only in rhetoric, but in all compositions, is perspicuity.
Richard Whately
Honesty is the best policy but he who is governed by that maxim is not an honest man.
Richard Whately
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.
Richard Whately
Eloquence is relative. One can no more pronounce on the eloquence of any composition than the wholesomeness of a medicine, without knowing for whom it is intended.
Richard Whately
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
It is also important to guard against mistaking for good-nature what is properly good-humor,--a cheerful flow of spirits and easy temper not readily annoyed, which is compatible with great selfishness.
Richard Whately
It is quite possible, and not uncommon, to read most laboriously, even so as to get by heart the words of a book, without really studying it at all,--that is, without employing the thoughts on the subject.
Richard Whately
An instinct is a blind tendency to some mode of action, independent of any consideration, on the part of the agent, of the end to which the action leads.
Richard Whately
