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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
Knowing
Without
Wholesomeness
Pronounce
Eloquence
Intended
Composition
Relative
Medicine

More quotes by Richard Whately

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He that is not open to conviction is not qualified for discussion.
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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 metaphors, those generally conduce most to energy or vivacity of style which illustrate an intellectual by a sensible object.
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It is worth noticing that those who assume an imposing demeanor and seek to pass themselves off for something beyond what they are, are not unfrequently as much underrated by some as overrated by others.
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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.
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Though not always called upon to condemn ourselves, it is always safe to suspect ourselves.
Richard Whately
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To know your ruling passion, examine your castles in the air.
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.
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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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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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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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Women never reason, or, if they do, they either draw correct inferences from wrong premises, or wrong inferences from correct premises and they always poke the fire from the top.
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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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When a man says he wants to work, what he means is that he wants wages.
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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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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.
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Manners are one of the greatest engines of influence ever given to man.
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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Even supposing there were some spiritual advantage in celibacy, it ought to be completely voluntary.
Richard Whately
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The love of admiration leads to fraud, much more than the love of commendation but, on the other hand, the latter is much more likely to spoil our: good actions by the substitution of an inferior motive.
Richard Whately