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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

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The first requisite of style, not only in rhetoric, but in all compositions, is perspicuity.
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The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.
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It is a good plan, with a young person of a character to be much affected by ludicrous and absurd representations, to show him plainly by examples that there is nothing which may not be thus represented. He will hardly need to be told that everything is not a mere joke.
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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.
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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 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.
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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.
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To know your ruling passion, examine your castles in the air.
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The Eastern monarch who proclaimed a reward to him who should discover a new pleasure, would have deserved well of mankind had he stipulated that it should be blameless.
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Neither human applause nor human censure is to be taken as the best of truth but either should set us upon testing ourselves.
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It is generally true that all that is required to make men unmindful of what they owe to God for any blessing, is, that they should receive that blessing often and regularly.
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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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No one complains of the rules of Grammar as fettering Language because it is understood that correct use is not founded on Grammar, but Grammar on correct use. A just system of Logic or of Rhetoric is analogous, in this respect, to Grammar.
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Nothing but the right can ever be expedient, since that can never be true expediency which would sacrifice a great good to a less.
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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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If all our wishes were gratified, most of our pleasures would be destroyed.
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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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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 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.
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