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A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition.

Charles Caleb Colton

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

Improvement Plagiarism Preparation Selection Skills Taste
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.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Admit Justice Moments Myself Reading
Women that are the least bashful are often the most modest.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Anand Thakur
That cowardice is incorrigible which the love of power cannot overcome.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Coward Love Power
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

Greatness Majority Rare Reading Thinking Writing
A house may draw visitors, but it is the possessor alone that can detain them.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Anand Thakur
Falsehood is often rocked by truth, but she soon outgrows her cradle and discards her nurse.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Fake Herself Nurse Rock Truth
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

Awkward Beginning Embarrassment Subject Theme Writing
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.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Defect Enemy Learning Ourselves Side Success Surround World
Man is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Bundle Contradiction Man Paradox
We often pretend to fear what we really despise, and more often despise what we really fear.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Fear Human Nature Pretend
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

Excellence Himself Privacy Station Talk
A high degree of intellectual refinement in the female is the surest pledge society can have for the improvement of the male.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Female Improvement Intellectual Male Pledge
We hate some persons because we do not know them; and will not know them because we hate them.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Anand Thakur
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.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Miracle Person Reason Recover
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.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Literature Sentence Speech Talk

A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition.

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A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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