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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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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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The best security against revolution is in constant correction of abuses and the introduction of needed improvements. It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.
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A fanatic, either, religious or political, is the subject of strong delusions.
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It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.
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Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.
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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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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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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.
Richard Whately
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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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Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry gets the best of the argument.
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.
Richard Whately
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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.
Richard Whately
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The first requisite of style, not only in rhetoric, but in all compositions, is perspicuity.
Richard Whately
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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.
Richard Whately
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Christianity, contrasted with the Jewish system of emblems, is truth in the sense of reality, as substance is opposed to shadows, and, contrasted with heathen mythology, is truth as opposed to falsehood.
Richard Whately
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Better too much form than too little.
Richard Whately
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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.
Richard Whately
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The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.
Richard Whately
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The power of duly appreciating little things belongs to a great mind.
Richard Whately
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That is suitable to a man, in point of ornamental expense, not which he can afford to have, but which he can afford to lose.
Richard Whately