Richard Whately
Richard Whately
Richard Whatelywas an English rhetorician, logician, economist, academic and theologian who also served as a reforming Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin. He was a leading Broad Churchman, a prolific and combative author over a wide range of topics, a flamboyant character, and one of the first reviewers to recognise the talents of Jane Austen...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth1 February 1787
Richard Whately quotes about
men extravagance expenses
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.
ingredients poison may
Falsehood, like poison, will generally be rejected when administered alone; but when blended with wholesome ingredients may be swallowed unperceived.
men may folly
It is folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do.
kings lying gun
The attendant on William Rufus, who discharged at a deer an arrow, which glanced against a tree and killed the king, was no murderer, because he had no such design. And, on the other hand, a man who should lie in wait to assassinate another, and pull the trigger of a gun with that intent, would be morally a murderer, not the less though the gun should chance to miss fire.
style intellectual energy
Of metaphors, those generally conduce most to energy or vivacity of style which illustrate an intellectual by a sensible object.
exercise doe students
As an exercise of the reasoning faculties, pure mathematics is an admirable exercise, because it consists of reasoning alone and does not encumber the student with any exercise of judgment.
independent agents action
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.
evil infidelity indifference
The depreciation of Christianity by indifference is a more insidious and less curable evil than infidelity itself.
annoyed important cheerful
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.
gambling desire profit
All gaming, since it implies a desire to profit at the expense of another, involves a breach of the tenth commandment.
reading character may
Those who relish the study of character may profit by the reading of good works of fiction, the product of well-established authors.
men thinking giving
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.
use coins ethical
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.
english-writer human objects optics
In our judgment of human transactions, the law of optics is reversed; we see the most indistinctly the objects which are close around us.