Wit may do very well for a mistress, but I should prefer reason for a wife.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONTime 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.
More Charles Caleb Colton Quotes
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It is doubtful whether mankind are most indebted to those who like Bacon and Butler dig the gold from the mine of literature, or to those who, like Paley, purify it, stamp it, fix its real value, and give it currency and utility.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
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 COLTON -
Justice to my readers compels me to admit that I write because I have nothing to do; justice to myself induces me to add that I will cease to write the moment I have nothing to say.
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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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The more gross the fraud the more glibly will it go down, and the more greedily be swallowed, since folly will always find faith where impostors will find imprudence.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
A house may draw visitors, but it is the possessor alone that can detain them.
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Physical courage, which despises all danger, will make a man brave in one way; and moral courage, which despises all opinion, will make a man brave in another.
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Eloquence is the language of nature, and cannot be learned in the schools; but rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least will most excel in.
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Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route.
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Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
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.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
The poorest man would not part with health for money, but the richest would gladly part with all their money for health.
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It is better to meet danger than to wait for it. He that is on a lee shore, and foresees a hurricane, stands out to sea and encounters a storm to avoid a shipwreck.
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We ask advice but we mean approbation.
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Most females will forgive a liberty rather than a slight.
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Sturdy beggars can bear stout denials.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in their actions.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
Honor is the most capricious in her rewards. She feeds us with air, and often pulls down our house, to build our monument.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
Be real and adjust you strategy according to honest results.
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Law and equity are two things which God has joined, but which man has put asunder.
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He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place.
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Self-denial is often the sacrifice of one sort of self-love for another.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
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.
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He that is good will infallibly become better, and he that is bad will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue, and time are three things that never stand still.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
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