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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
Eloquence
Intended
Composition
Relative
Medicine
Knowing
Without
Wholesomeness
Pronounce

More quotes by Richard Whately

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It may be worth noticing as a curious circumstance, when persons past forty before they were at all acquainted form together a very close intimacy of friendship. For grafts of old wood to take, there must be a wonderful congeniality between the trees.
Richard Whately
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The first requisite of style, not only in rhetoric, but in all compositions, is perspicuity.
Richard Whately
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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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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.
Richard Whately
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A fanatic, either, religious or political, is the subject of strong delusions.
Richard Whately
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Better too much form than too little.
Richard Whately
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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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As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works.
Richard Whately
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The power of duly appreciating little things belongs to a great mind.
Richard Whately
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He who is not aware of his ignorance will be only misled by his knowledge.
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
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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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Some men's reputation seems like seed-wheat, which thrives best when brought from a distance.
Richard Whately
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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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Of metaphors, those generally conduce most to energy or vivacity of style which illustrate an intellectual by a sensible object.
Richard Whately
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The best security against revolution is in constant correction of abuses and the introduction of needed improvements. It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.
Richard Whately
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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.
Richard Whately
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A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.
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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Galileo probably would have escaped persecution if his discoveries could have been disproved.
Richard Whately