Quotes by Richard Whately

• Preach not because you have to say something, but because you have something to say.
• To follow imperfect, uncertain, or corrupted traditions, in order to avoid erring in our own judgment, is but to exchange one danger for another.
• Men are like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one.
• 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.
• Manners are one of the greatest engines of influence ever given to man.
• There is a soul of truth in error; there is a soul of good in evil.
• 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.
• To know your ruling passion, examine your castles in the air.
• Unless people can be kept in the dark, it is best for those who love the truth to give them the full light.
• All men wish to have truth on their side; but few to be on the side of truth.
• Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.
• It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.
• It is generally true that all that is required to make men unmindful of what they owe God for any blessing is that they should receive that blessing often and regularly.
• It is folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do.
• Honesty is the best policy; but he who is governed by that maxim is not an honest man.
• He only is exempt from failures who makes no efforts.
• Happiness is no laughing matter.
• Everyone wishes to have truth on his side, but not everyone wishes to be on the side of truth.
• Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.
• As one may bring himself to believe almost anything he is inclined to believe, it makes all the difference whether we begin or end with the inquiry, 'What is truth?'
• A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.
• A man who gives his children habits of industry provides for them better than by giving them fortune.
• In our judgment of human transactions, the law of optics is reversed; we see the most indistinctly the objects which are close around us.