He that can enjoy the intimacy of the great, and on no occasion disgust them by familiarity, or disgrace himself by servility, proves that he is as perfect a gentleman by nature as his companions are by rank.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONThe 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.
More Charles Caleb Colton Quotes
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When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
Unlike the sun, intellectual luminaries shine brightest after they set.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
We ask advice but we mean approbation.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
A man’s profundity may keep him from opening on a first interview, and his caution on a second; but I should suspect his emptiness, if he carried on his reserve to a third.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
Taking things not as they ought to be, but as they are, I fear it must be allowed that Macchiavelli will always have more disciples than Jesus.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
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.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
We are more inclined to hate one another for points on which we differ, than to love one another for points on which we agree.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
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 -
The excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
He that studies books alone, will know how things ought to be; and he that studies men, will know how things are.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
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 COLTON -
A house may draw visitors, but it is the possessor alone that can detain them.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
Bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON