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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.

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
Religious
Devising
Feelings
Superstition
Men
Exhausting
Superstitions
Excess
Vanity
Defined
Misdirection
Feeling
Vanities

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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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Proverbs accordingly are somewhat analogous to those medical Formulas which, being in frequent use, are kept ready-made-up in the chemists’ shops, and which often save the framing of a distinct Prescription.
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Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.
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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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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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Some men's reputation seems like seed-wheat, which thrives best when brought from a distance.
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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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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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As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works.
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The first requisite of style, not only in rhetoric, but in all compositions, is perspicuity.
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Woman is like the reed which bends to every breeze, but breaks not in the tempest.
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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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Better too much form than too little.
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The tendency of party spirit has ever been to disguise and propagate and support error.
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He only is exempt from failures who makes no efforts.
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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.
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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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It is one thing to wish to have truth on our side, and another to wish sincerely to be on the side of truth.
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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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The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.
Richard Whately