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When men have become heartily wearied of licentious anarchy, their eagerness has been proportionately great to embrace the opposite extreme of rigorous despotism.

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
Men
Anarchy
Extreme
Licentious
Extremes
Proportionately
Opposite
Wearied
Opposites
Heartily
Embrace
Rigorous
Become
Eagerness
Great
Despotism

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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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A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.
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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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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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When a man says he wants to work, what he means is that he wants wages.
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As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works.
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Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.
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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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A fanatic, either, religious or political, is the subject of strong delusions.
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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.
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Nothing but the right can ever be expedient, since that can never be true expediency which would sacrifice a great good to a less.
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He who is not aware of his ignorance will be only misled by his knowledge.
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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.
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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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Better too much form than too little.
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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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Even supposing there were some spiritual advantage in celibacy, it ought to be completely voluntary.
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