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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
Composition
Relative
Medicine
Knowing
Without
Wholesomeness
Pronounce
Eloquence
Intended

More quotes by Richard Whately

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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.
Richard Whately
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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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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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Honesty is the best policy but he who is governed by that maxim is not an honest man.
Richard Whately
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It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.
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It is folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do.
Richard Whately
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It is a good plan, with a young person of a character to be much affected by ludicrous and absurd representations, to show him plainly by examples that there is nothing which may not be thus represented. He will hardly need to be told that everything is not a mere joke.
Richard Whately
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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.
Richard Whately
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Christianity, contrasted with the Jewish system of emblems, is truth in the sense of reality, as substance is opposed to shadows, and, contrasted with heathen mythology, is truth as opposed to falsehood.
Richard Whately
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Some men's reputation seems like seed-wheat, which thrives best when brought from a distance.
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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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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
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Everyone wishes to have truth on his side, but not everyone wishes to be on the side of truth.
Richard Whately
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In our judgment of human transactions, the law of optics is reversed, we see most dimly the objects which are close around us.
Richard Whately
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He that is not open to conviction is not qualified for discussion.
Richard Whately
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The tendency of party spirit has ever been to disguise and propagate and support error.
Richard Whately
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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.
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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An instinct is a blind tendency to some mode of action, independent of any consideration, on the part of the agent, of the end to which the action leads.
Richard Whately
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As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works.
Richard Whately