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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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Richard Whately
Age: 76 †
Born: 1787
Born: February 1
Died: 1863
Died: October 8
Economist
Philosopher
Priest
Theologian
London
England
Giving
Extraordinary
Omit
Every
Rocks
Geologist
Time
Events
Historians
Life
Particular
Complain
Common
Historian
History
Complaining
Give
Receive
Geologists
Country
Curious
Specimens

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Though not always called upon to condemn ourselves, it is always safe to suspect ourselves.
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Happiness is no laughing matter.
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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 generally true that all that is required to make men unmindful of what they owe to God for any blessing, is, that they should receive that blessing often and regularly.
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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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In our judgment of human transactions, the law of optics is reversed, we see most dimly the objects which are close around us.
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The best security against revolution is in constant correction of abuses and the introduction of needed improvements. It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.
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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.
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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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As there are dim-sighted people who live in a sort of perpetual twilight, so there are some who, having neither much clearness of head nor a very elevated tone of morality, are perpetually haunted by suspicions of everybody and everything.
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As the telescope is not a substitute for, but an aid to, our sight, so revelation is not designed to supersede the use of reason, but to supply its deficiencies.
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Even supposing there were some spiritual advantage in celibacy, it ought to be completely voluntary.
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The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.
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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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Everyone wishes to have truth on his side, but not everyone wishes to be on the side of truth.
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