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

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Controversy, though always an evil in itself, is sometimes a necessary evil.
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Manners are one of the greatest engines of influence ever given to man.
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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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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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The Eastern monarch who proclaimed a reward to him who should discover a new pleasure, would have deserved well of mankind had he stipulated that it should be blameless.
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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.
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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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Even supposing there were some spiritual advantage in celibacy, it ought to be completely voluntary.
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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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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.
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The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.
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It is quite possible, and not uncommon, to read most laboriously, even so as to get by heart the words of a book, without really studying it at all,--that is, without employing the thoughts on the subject.
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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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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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Better too much form than too little.
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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.
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It is a remarkable circumstance in reference to cunning persons that they are often deficient not only in comprehensive, far-sighted wisdom, but even in prudent, cautious circumspection.
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A fanatic, either, religious or political, is the subject of strong delusions.
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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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Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry gets the best of the argument.
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