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
law optics judgment
In our judgment of human transactions, the law of optics is reversed, we see most dimly the objects which are close around us.
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.
country rocks history
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.
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.
friendship past tree
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.
awful may spirit
It is an awful, an appalling thought, that we may be, this moment and every moment, in the presence of malignant spirits.
book passion imagination
Not in books only, nor yet in oral discourse, but often also in words there are boundless stores of moral and historic truth, and no less of passion and imagination laid up, from which lessons of infinite worth may be derived.
men sheep driven
Men are like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one.
gratitude appreciate mind
The power of duly appreciating little things belongs to a great mind...
mean men wages
When a man says he wants to work, what he means is that he wants wages.
use medical made
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.
men law suffering
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.
inspirational past perception
It may be said, almost without qualification, that true wisdom consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies. Without the former quality, knowledge of the past is unobstructive: without the latter it is deceptive.