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

More quotes by Richard Whately

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It is folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do.
Richard Whately
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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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There is no right faith in believing what is true, unless we believe it because it is true.
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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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.
Richard Whately
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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.
Richard Whately
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Controversy, though always an evil in itself, is sometimes a necessary evil.
Richard Whately
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As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works.
Richard Whately
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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.
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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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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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.
Richard Whately
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If all our wishes were gratified, most of our pleasures would be destroyed.
Richard Whately
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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.
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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To follow imperfect, uncertain, or corrupted traditions, in order to avoid erring in our own judgment, is but to exchange one danger for another.
Richard Whately
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Of metaphors, those generally conduce most to energy or vivacity of style which illustrate an intellectual by a sensible object.
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.
Richard Whately
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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.
Richard Whately
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Galileo probably would have escaped persecution if his discoveries could have been disproved.
Richard Whately