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

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All frauds, like the wall daubed with untempered mortar ... always tend to the decay of what they are devised to support.
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It is quite possible, and not uncommon, to read most laboriously, even so as to get by heart the words of a book, without really studying it at all,--that is, without employing the thoughts on the subject.
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A fanatic, either, religious or political, is the subject of strong delusions.
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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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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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That is suitable to a man, in point of ornamental expense, not which he can afford to have, but which he can afford to lose.
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He that is not open to conviction is not qualified for discussion.
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Woman is like the reed which bends to every breeze, but breaks not in the tempest.
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When a man says he wants to work, what he means is that he wants wages.
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Controversy, though always an evil in itself, is sometimes a necessary evil.
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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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Some persons follow the dictates of their conscience only in the same sense in which a coachman may be said to follow the horses he is driving.
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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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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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A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.
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The more secure we feel against our liability to any error to which, in fact, we are liable, the greater must be our danger of falling into it.
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Galileo probably would have escaped persecution if his discoveries could have been disproved.
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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.
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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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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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