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Galileo probably would have escaped persecution if his discoveries could have been disproved.

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
Galileo
Escaped
Discoveries
Persecution
Discovery
Probably
Would
Disproved

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Woman is like the reed which bends to every breeze, but breaks not in the tempest.
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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 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.
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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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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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Better too much form than too little.
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The tendency of party spirit has ever been to disguise and propagate and support error.
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He only is exempt from failures who makes no efforts.
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Of metaphors, those generally conduce most to energy or vivacity of style which illustrate an intellectual by a sensible object.
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To know your ruling passion, examine your castles in the air.
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Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.
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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.
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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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Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry gets the best of the argument.
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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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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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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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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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Happiness is no laughing matter.
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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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