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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
Never
Metals
Discourse
Bandied
Base
Detected
Ethical
Melted
Current
Coin
Currents
Maxims
Sort
Coins
Use
Metal

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A fanatic, either, religious or political, is the subject of strong delusions.
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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.
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It is also important to guard against mistaking for good-nature what is properly good-humor,--a cheerful flow of spirits and easy temper not readily annoyed, which is compatible with great selfishness.
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Galileo probably would have escaped persecution if his discoveries could have been disproved.
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The tendency of party spirit has ever been to disguise and propagate and support error.
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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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To know your ruling passion, examine your castles in the air.
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The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.
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When a man says he wants to work, what he means is that he wants wages.
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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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If all our wishes were gratified, most of our pleasures would be destroyed.
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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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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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As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works.
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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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Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
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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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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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Better too much form than too little.
Richard Whately