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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.

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
Pronounce
Eloquence
Intended
Composition
Relative
Medicine
Knowing
Without
Wholesomeness

More quotes by Richard Whately

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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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If all our wishes were gratified, most of our pleasures would be destroyed.
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Woman is like the reed which bends to every breeze, but breaks not in the tempest.
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Unless people can be kept in the dark, it is best for those who love the truth to give them the full light.
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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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Proverbs accordingly are somewhat analogous to those medical Formulas which, being in frequent use, are kept ready-made-up in the chemists’ shops, and which often save the framing of a distinct Prescription.
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Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.
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As there are dim-sighted people who live in a sort of perpetual twilight, so there are some who, having neither much clearness of head nor a very elevated tone of morality, are perpetually haunted by suspicions of everybody and everything.
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He only is exempt from failures who makes no efforts.
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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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Of metaphors, those generally conduce most to energy or vivacity of style which illustrate an intellectual by a sensible object.
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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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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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As a science, logic institutes an analysis of the process of the mind in reasoning, and investigating the principles on which argumentation is conducted as an art, it furnishes such rules as may be derived from those principles, for guarding against erroneous deductions.
Richard Whately
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It is one thing to wish to have truth on our side, and another to wish sincerely to be on the side of truth.
Richard Whately
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To follow imperfect, uncertain, or corrupted traditions, in order to avoid erring in our own judgment, is but to exchange one danger for another.
Richard Whately
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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.
Richard Whately
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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.
Richard Whately
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Geologists complain that when they want specimens of the common rocks of a country, they receive curious spars just so, historians give us the extraordinary events and omit just what we want,--the every-day life of each particular time and country.
Richard Whately
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He that is not open to conviction is not qualified for discussion.
Richard Whately