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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
Life
Particular
Complain
Common
Historian
History
Complaining
Give
Receive
Geologists
Country
Curious
Specimens
Giving
Extraordinary
Omit
Every
Rocks
Geologist
Time
Events
Historians

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Men are like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one.
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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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When a man says he wants to work, what he means is that he wants wages.
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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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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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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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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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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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The happiest lot for a man, as far as birth is concerned, is that it should be such as to give him but little occasion to think much about it.
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Galileo probably would have escaped persecution if his discoveries could have been disproved.
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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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Controversy, though always an evil in itself, is sometimes a necessary evil.
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One way in which fools succeed where wise men fail is that through ignorance of the danger they sometimes go coolly about a hazardous business.
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Happiness is no laughing matter.
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Even supposing there were some spiritual advantage in celibacy, it ought to be completely voluntary.
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Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.
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Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.
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Of metaphors, those generally conduce most to energy or vivacity of style which illustrate an intellectual by a sensible object.
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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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