The awkwardness and embarrassment which all feel on beginning to write, when they themselves are the theme, ought to serve as a hint to author’s that self is a subject they ought very rarely to descant upon.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONTaking things not as they ought to be, but as they are, I fear it must be allowed that Macchiavelli will always have more disciples than Jesus.
More Charles Caleb Colton Quotes
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The family is the most basic unit of government. As the first community to which a person is attached and the first authority under which a person learns to live, the family establishes society’s most basic values.
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The worst thing that can be said of the most powerful is that they can take your life; but the same can be said of the most weak.
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God is as great in minuteness as He is in magnitude.
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Theories are private property, but truth is common stock.
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As that gallant can best affect a pretended passion for one woman who has no true love for another, so he that has no real esteem for any of the virtues can best assume the appearance of them all.
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The head of dullness, unlike the tail of the torpedo, loses nothing of the benumbing and lethargizing influence by reiterated discharges.
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Some read to think, these are rare; some to write, these are common; and some read to talk, and these form the great majority.
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A fool is often as dangerous to deal with as a knave, and always more incorrigible.
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It is astonishing how much more people are interested in lengthening life than improving it.
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Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.
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Make no enemies; he is insignificant indeed that can do thee no harm.
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Sturdy beggars can bear stout denials.
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Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past, even while we attempt to define it.
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Pleasure is to women what the sun is to the flower; if moderately enjoyed, it beautifies, it refreshes, and it improves; if immoderately, it withers, deteriorates and destroys.
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Men’s arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.
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There are both dull correctness and piquant carelessness; it is needless to say which will command the most readers and have the most influence.
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None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.
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An honest man will continue to be so though surrounded on all sides by rogues.
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He that can enjoy the intimacy of the great, and on no occasion disgust them by familiarity, or disgrace himself by servility, proves that he is as perfect a gentleman by nature as his companions are by rank.
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To admit that there is any such thing as chance, in the common acceptation of the term, would be to attempt to establish a power independent of God.
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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.
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It is easier to pretend to be what you are not than to hide what you really are; but he that can accomplish both has little to learn in hypocrisy.
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Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live.
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Hurry is the mark of a weak mind, dispatch of a strong one.
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Words indeed are but the signs and counters of knowledge, and their currency should be strictly regulated by the capital which they represent.
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A public debt is a kind of anchor in the storm; but if the anchor be too heavy for the vessel, she will be sunk by that very weight which was intended for her preservation.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON