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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.

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
Never
Since
Would
Less
True
Ever
Nothing
Right
Expedient
Great
Expediency
Good
Sacrifice

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No one complains of the rules of Grammar as fettering Language because it is understood that correct use is not founded on Grammar, but Grammar on correct use. A just system of Logic or of Rhetoric is analogous, in this respect, to Grammar.
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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.
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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.
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It is a remarkable circumstance in reference to cunning persons that they are often deficient not only in comprehensive, far-sighted wisdom, but even in prudent, cautious circumspection.
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Controversy, though always an evil in itself, is sometimes a necessary evil.
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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.
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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.
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Honesty is the best policy but he who is governed by that maxim is not an honest man.
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The power of duly appreciating little things belongs to a great mind.
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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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It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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It is folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do.
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Better too much form than too little.
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A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.
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