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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.

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
Law
Suffering
Effecting
Purpose
Deter
Every
Penalty
Men
Penalties
Instance
Prison
Failure

More quotes by 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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Controversy, though always an evil in itself, is sometimes a necessary evil.
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Happiness is no laughing matter.
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When men have become heartily wearied of licentious anarchy, their eagerness has been proportionately great to embrace the opposite extreme of rigorous despotism.
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The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.
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It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.
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There is no right faith in believing what is true, unless we believe it because it is true.
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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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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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In our judgment of human transactions, the law of optics is reversed, we see most dimly the objects which are close around us.
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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.
Richard Whately
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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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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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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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Men are like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one.
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Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.
Richard Whately
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Woman is like the reed which bends to every breeze, but breaks not in the tempest.
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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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.
Richard Whately
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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.
Richard Whately