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Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase.

Charles Caleb Colton

Strong as our passions are, they may be starved into submission, and conquered without being killed.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Kill Ourselves Passion Strong Submission
Man is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Bundle Contradiction Man Paradox
Pure truth, like pure gold, has been found unfit for circulation because men have discovered that it is far more convenient to adulterate the truth than to refine themselves.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Adult Convinience Finding Purity Truth
I have found by experience that they who have spent all their lives in cities, improve their talents but impair their virtues; and strengthen their minds but weaken their morals.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Experience Finding Improvement Live Moral Talent Weakness
True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Friendship Health Known Lost Sound True
He that studies only men will get the body of knowledge without the soul; and he that studies only books, the soul without the body.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Body Knowledge Man Soul Study
Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow; but the misfortune is that in this particular case, the substance belongs to the shadow, the emptiness to its cause.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Case Empty Follow Misfortune Pain Shadow Substance
Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Deep Fools Silence Wisdom
If you are under obligations to many, it is prudent to postpone the recompensing of one, until it be in your power to remunerate all; otherwise you will make more enemies by what you give, than by what you withhold.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Enemy Hold Obligation Power
There are prating coxcombs in the world who would rather talk than listen, although Shakespeare himself were the orator, and human nature the theme!
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Himself Human Listening Nature World
It may be observed of good writing, as of good blood, that it is much easier to say what it is composed of than to compose it.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Compose Goodness Observation Writing
It is curious that some learned dunces, because they can write nonsense in languages that are dead, should despise those that talk sense in languages that are living.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Curiosity Death Language Live Talk
What would you do if you knew for sure that no one would ever find out?
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Choice Known Willing Yourself
The Grecian’s maxim would indeed be a sweeping clause in Literature; it would reduce many a giant to a pygmy; many a speech to a sentence; and many a folio to a primer.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Literature Sentence Speech Talk
Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Circumstance Commerce Flourish Shore Wave
Grant graciously what you cannot refuse safely and conciliate those you cannot conquer.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Conquer Grace Grant Refusal Safety Yourself

Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase.

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Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase.

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