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

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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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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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Some men's reputation seems like seed-wheat, which thrives best when brought from a distance.
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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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The power of duly appreciating little things belongs to a great mind.
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Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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Honesty is the best policy but he who is governed by that maxim is not an honest man.
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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.
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Happiness is no laughing matter.
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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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To know your ruling passion, examine your castles in the air.
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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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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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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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The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.
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