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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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Richard Whately
Age: 76 †
Born: 1787
Born: February 1
Died: 1863
Died: October 8
Economist
Philosopher
Priest
Theologian
London
England
Horses
Driving
Horse
Conscience
Follow
Sense
May
Persons
Dictates

More quotes by Richard Whately

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As hardly anything can accidentally touch the soft clay without stamping its mark on it, so hardly any reading can interest a child, without contributing in some degree, though the book itself be afterwards totally forgotten, to form the character.
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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.
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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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An instinct is a blind tendency to some mode of action, independent of any consideration, on the part of the agent, of the end to which the action leads.
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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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The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.
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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 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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Happiness is no laughing matter.
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If all our wishes were gratified, most of our pleasures would be destroyed.
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He only is exempt from failures who makes no efforts.
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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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Galileo probably would have escaped persecution if his discoveries could have been disproved.
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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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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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A fanatic, either, religious or political, is the subject of strong delusions.
Richard Whately
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To know your ruling passion, examine your castles in the air.
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.
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Woman is like the reed which bends to every breeze, but breaks not in the tempest.
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