Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONThe 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.
More Charles Caleb Colton Quotes
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True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
He that studies only men will get the body of knowledge without the soul; and he that studies only books, the soul without the body.
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If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself; all that runs over will be yours.
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Sturdy beggars can bear stout denials.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
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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A society composed of none but the wicked could not exist; it contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction, and without a flood, would be swept away from the earth by the deluge of its own iniquity.
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Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride.
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Falsehood is often rocked by truth, but she soon outgrows her cradle and discards her nurse.
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Pride requires very costly food-its keeper’s happiness.
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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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It is with antiquity as with ancestry, nations are proud of the one, and individuals of the other; but if they are nothing in themselves, that which is their pride ought to be their humiliation.
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Most plagiarists, like the drone, have neither taste to select, industry to acquire, nor skill to improve, but impudently pilfer the honey ready prepared, from the hive.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
That cowardice is incorrigible which the love of power cannot overcome.
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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.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
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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God is as great in minuteness as He is in magnitude.
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Most females will forgive a liberty rather than a slight.
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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.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
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.
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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.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
If a cause be good, the most violent attack of its enemies will not injure it so much as an injudicious defence of it by its friends.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
Hope is a prodigal young heir, and experience is his banker.
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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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There are three modes of bearing the ills of life; by indifference, which is the most common; by philosophy, which is the most ostentatious; and by religion, which is the most effectual.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
Diffidence is the better part of knowledge.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON