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The more secure we feel against our liability to any error to which, in fact, we are liable, the greater must be our danger of falling into it.

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
Facts
Error
Feel
Falling
Must
Secure
Feels
Errors
Danger
Greater
Fact
Liability
Fall
Liable

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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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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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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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Some men's reputation seems like seed-wheat, which thrives best when brought from a distance.
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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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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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He only is exempt from failures who makes no efforts.
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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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Better too much form than too little.
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.
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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.
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Woman is like the reed which bends to every breeze, but breaks not in the tempest.
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.
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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.
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That is suitable to a man, in point of ornamental expense, not which he can afford to have, but which he can afford to lose.
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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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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All gaming, since it implies a desire to profit at the expense of another, involves a breach of the tenth commandment.
Richard Whately
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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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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