There were moments of despondency when Shakespeare thought himself no poet, and Raphael no painter; when the greatest wits have doubted the excellence of their happiest efforts.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONGrant graciously what you cannot refuse safely and conciliate those you cannot conquer.
More Charles Caleb Colton Quotes
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Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.
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The present time has one advantage over every other — it is our own.
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Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores.
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Oppression cannot prosper where none will submit to be enslaved.
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War is a game in which princes seldom win, the people never.
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Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us – never cease to instruct – never cloy.
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Bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret.
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Strong as our passions are, they may be starved into submission, and conquered without being killed.
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No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us. Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with our all to keep it.
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Silence is less injurious than a weak reply.
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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.
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Mystery magnifies danger as the fog the sun.
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We are more inclined to hate one another for points on which we differ, than to love one another for points on which we agree.
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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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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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What would you do if you knew for sure that no one would ever find out?
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Logic and metaphysics make use of more tools than all the rest of the sciences put together, and do the least work.
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The excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age.
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That is fine benevolence, finely executed, which, like the Nile, comes from hidden sources.
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Happiness leads none of us by the same route.
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True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.
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Men’s arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.
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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.
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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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Physicians must discover the weaknesses of the human mind, and even condescend to humor them, or they will never be called in to cure the infirmities of the body.
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Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON