To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it: the pains of power are real, its pleasures imaginary.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONPain 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.
More Charles Caleb Colton Quotes
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It is with antiquity as with ancestry, nations are proud of the one, and individuals of the other; but if they are nothing in themselves, that which is their pride ought to be their humiliation.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
When you have nothing to say, say nothing; a weak defense strengthens your opponent, and silence is less injurious than a bad reply.
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The French have a saying that whatever excellence a man may exhibit in a public station he is very apt to be ridiculous in a private one.
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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.
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Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in their actions.
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To cure us of our immoderate love of gain, we should seriously consider how many goods there are that money will not purchase, and these the best; and how many evils there are that money will not remedy, and these the worst.
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None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.
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I have somewhere seen it observed that we should make the same use of a book that the bee does of a flower: she steals sweets from it, but does not injure it.
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Unlike the sun, intellectual luminaries shine brightest after they set.
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Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
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That cowardice is incorrigible which the love of power cannot overcome.
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Cheerfulness ought to be the viaticum vitae of their life to the old; age without cheerfulness is a Lapland winter without a sun.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
We hate some persons because we do not know them; and will not know them because we hate them.
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We should not be too niggardly in our praise, for men will do more to support a character than to raise one.
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Fortune, like other females, prefers a lover to a master, and submits with impatience to control; but he that wooes her with opportunity and importunity will seldom court her in vain.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON






