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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.

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
Respect
Grammar
System
Founded
Language
Rhetoric
Use
Correct
Complaining
Logic
Rules
Complains
Understood
Analogous

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Everyone wishes to have truth on his side, but not everyone wishes to be on the side of truth.
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When a man says he wants to work, what he means is that he wants wages.
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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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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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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.
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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 heathen mythology not only was not true, but was not even supported as true it not only deserved no faith, but it demanded none. The very pretension to truth, the very demand of faith, were characteristic distinctions of Christianity.
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Some men's reputation seems like seed-wheat, which thrives best when brought from a distance.
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A fanatic, either, religious or political, is the subject of strong delusions.
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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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The tendency of party spirit has ever been to disguise and propagate and support error.
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Manners are one of the greatest engines of influence ever given to man.
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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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Though not always called upon to condemn ourselves, it is always safe to suspect ourselves.
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As there are dim-sighted people who live in a sort of perpetual twilight, so there are some who, having neither much clearness of head nor a very elevated tone of morality, are perpetually haunted by suspicions of everybody and everything.
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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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Galileo probably would have escaped persecution if his discoveries could have been disproved.
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Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.
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Controversy, though always an evil in itself, is sometimes a necessary evil.
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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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