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The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.

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
Knowledge
Three
Strictly
Truth
Implies
Things
Employed
Conviction
Proof
Word
Understanding

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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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As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works.
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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.
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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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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.
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It is folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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One way in which fools succeed where wise men fail is that through ignorance of the danger they sometimes go coolly about a hazardous business.
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He that is not open to conviction is not qualified for discussion.
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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.
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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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Unless people can be kept in the dark, it is best for those who love the truth to give them the full light.
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To know your ruling passion, examine your castles in the air.
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The first requisite of style, not only in rhetoric, but in all compositions, is perspicuity.
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To follow imperfect, uncertain, or corrupted traditions, in order to avoid erring in our own judgment, is but to exchange one danger for another.
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