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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
Follow
Sense
May
Persons
Dictates
Horses
Driving
Horse
Conscience

More quotes by Richard Whately

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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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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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As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works.
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Though not always called upon to condemn ourselves, it is always safe to suspect ourselves.
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Everyone wishes to have truth on his side, but not everyone wishes to be on the side of truth.
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The tendency of party spirit has ever been to disguise and propagate and support error.
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Controversy, though always an evil in itself, is sometimes a necessary evil.
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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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Falsehood is difficult to be maintained. When the materials of a building are solid blocks of stone, very rude architecture will suffice but a structure of rotten materials needs the most careful adjustment to make it stand at all.
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Even supposing there were some spiritual advantage in celibacy, it ought to be completely voluntary.
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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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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.
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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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As the telescope is not a substitute for, but an aid to, our sight, so revelation is not designed to supersede the use of reason, but to supply its deficiencies.
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Men are like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one.
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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.
Richard Whately
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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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Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.
Richard Whately
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The power of duly appreciating little things belongs to a great mind.
Richard Whately
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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.
Richard Whately