Quotes from Richard Whately

Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.

To know your ruling passion, examine your castles in the air.

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.

It is folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do.

Party spirit enlists a man's virtues in the cause of his vices.

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.

A man will never change his mind if he have no mind to change.

It is not that pearls fetch a high price because men have dived for them; but on the contrary, men have dived for them because they fetch a high price.

When men have become heartily wearied of licentious anarchy, their eagerness has been proportionately great to embrace the opposite extreme of rigorous despotism.

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.

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.

Do you want to know the man against whom you have most reason to guard yourself? Your looking-glass will give you a very fair likeness of his face.

Some men's reputation seems like seed-wheat, which thrives best when brought from a distance.

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.

Vices and frailties correct each other, like acids and alkalies. If each vicious man had but one vice, I do not know how the world could go on.

Man is naturally more desirous of a quiet and approving, than of a vigilant and tender conscience--more desirous of security than of safety.

Lose an hour in the morning and you will be all day hunting for it.

Good manners are a part of good morals.

Habits are formed, not at one stroke, but gradually and insensibly; so that, unless vigilant care be employed, a great change may come over the character without our being conscious of any.

The power of duly appreciating little things belongs to a great mind.

He who is not aware of his ignorance will be only misled by his knowledge.

A man who gives his children habits of industry provides for them better than by giving them fortune.

Manners are one of the greatest engines of influence ever given to man

A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.