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The first requisite of style, not only in rhetoric, but in all compositions, is perspicuity.

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
Compositions
Requisite
Rhetoric
Composition
Style
Firsts
First

More quotes by Richard Whately

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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.
Richard Whately
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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.
Richard Whately
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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.
Richard Whately
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Even supposing there were some spiritual advantage in celibacy, it ought to be completely voluntary.
Richard Whately
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Better too much form than too little.
Richard Whately
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Galileo probably would have escaped persecution if his discoveries could have been disproved.
Richard Whately
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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.
Richard Whately
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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.
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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To follow imperfect, uncertain, or corrupted traditions, in order to avoid erring in our own judgment, is but to exchange one danger for another.
Richard Whately
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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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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.
Richard Whately
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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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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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Men are like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one.
Richard Whately
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The Eastern monarch who proclaimed a reward to him who should discover a new pleasure, would have deserved well of mankind had he stipulated that it should be blameless.
Richard Whately
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Falsehood is difficult to be maintained. When the materials of a building are solid blocks of stone, very rude architecture will suffice but a structure of rotten materials needs the most careful adjustment to make it stand at all.
Richard Whately
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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.
Richard Whately
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The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.
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