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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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Richard Whately
Age: 76 †
Born: 1787
Born: February 1
Died: 1863
Died: October 8
Economist
Philosopher
Priest
Theologian
London
England
Base
Detected
Ethical
Melted
Current
Coin
Currents
Maxims
Sort
Coins
Use
Metal
Never
Metals
Discourse
Bandied

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The tendency of party spirit has ever been to disguise and propagate and support error.
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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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It is folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do.
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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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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.
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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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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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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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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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Woman is like the reed which bends to every breeze, but breaks not in the tempest.
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The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.
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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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There is no right faith in believing what is true, unless we believe it because it is true.
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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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Honesty is the best policy but he who is governed by that maxim is not an honest man.
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A fanatic, either, religious or political, is the subject of strong delusions.
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To be always thinking about your manners is not the way to make them good the very perfection of manners is not to think about yourself.
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He who is not aware of his ignorance will be only misled by his knowledge.
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Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.
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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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