There are three kinds of praise, that which we yield, that which we lend, and that which we pay. We yield it to the powerful from fear, we lend it to the weak from interest, and we pay it to the deserving from gratitude.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONTo 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.
More Charles Caleb Colton Quotes
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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.
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Pride is less ashamed of being ignorant, than of being instructed, and she looks too high to find that, which very often lies beneath her.
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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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Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.
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It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together.
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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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Some persons will tell you, with an air of the miraculous, that they recovered although they were given over; whereas they might with more reason have said, they recovered because they were given over.
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It is the briefest yet wisest maxim which tells us to meddle not.
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Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in their actions.
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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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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The avarice of the miser may be termed the grand sepulchral of all his other passions, as they successively decay.
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Revenge is fever in our own blood, to be cured only by letting the blood of another; but the remedy too often produces a relapse, which is remorse–a malady far more dreadful than the first disease, because it is incurable.
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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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The excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age.
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We ask advice but we mean approbation.
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Sturdy beggars can bear stout denials.
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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.
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What would you do if you knew for sure that no one would ever find out?
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In death itself there can be nothing terrible, for the act of death annihilates sensation; but there are many roads to death, and some of them justly formidable, even to the bravest.
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We know the effects of many things, but the cause of few; experience, therefore, is a surer guide than imagination, and inquiry than conjecture.
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Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.
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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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That cowardice is incorrigible which the love of power cannot overcome.
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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