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It is also important to guard against mistaking for good-nature what is properly good-humor,--a cheerful flow of spirits and easy temper not readily annoyed, which is compatible with great selfishness.

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
Easy
Cheerful
Spirit
Guard
Nature
Spirits
Also
Selfishness
Important
Temper
Mistaking
Great
Properly
Compatible
Good
Flow
Readily
Humor
Annoyed

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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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Woman is like the reed which bends to every breeze, but breaks not in the tempest.
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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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There is no right faith in believing what is true, unless we believe it because it is true.
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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.
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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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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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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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The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.
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Ethical maxims are bandied about as a sort of current coin of discourse, and, being never melted down for use, those that are of base metal are never detected.
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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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Manners are one of the greatest engines of influence ever given to man.
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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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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 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 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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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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If all our wishes were gratified, most of our pleasures would be destroyed.
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A fanatic, either, religious or political, is the subject of strong delusions.
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Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry gets the best of the argument.
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