The true motives of our actions, like the real pipes of an organ, are usually concealed; but the gilded and hollow pretext is pompously placed in the front for show.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONHe that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool.
More Charles Caleb Colton Quotes
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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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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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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.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.
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Constant success shows us but one side of the world. For as it surrounds us with friends who will tell us only our merits, so it silences those enemies from whom alone we can learn our defects.
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The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read.
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The victim to too severe a law is considered as a martyr rather than a criminal.
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God will excuse our prayers for ourselves whenever we are prevented from them by being occupied in such good works as to entitle us to the prayers of others.
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There are male as well as female gossips.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
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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Sturdy beggars can bear stout denials.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
Self-denial is often the sacrifice of one sort of self-love for another.
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That is fine benevolence, finely executed, which, like the Nile, comes from hidden sources.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
A coxcomb begins by determining that his own profession is the first; and he finishes by deciding that he is the first of profession.
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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.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON