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The true measure of your character is what you do when nobody’s watching.

Charles Caleb Colton

There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Excess Prudent
Imitation is the highest form of flattery.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Flattery Form High Imitation
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

Accomplishment Easy Hide Hypocrisy Learning Pretend
Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Blank Erase Errors Ignorance Writing
The poorest man would not part with health for money, but the richest would gladly part with all their money for health.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Difference Health Man Money Poor Rich
It is with nations as with individuals, those who know the least of others think the highest of themselves; for the whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Each Other Family Ignorance Nation Pride
As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Road Rough Saint
Total freedom from error is what none of us will allow to our neighbors; however we may be inclined to flirt a little with such spotless perfection ourselves.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Allow Error Flirt Freedom Ourselves Perfection
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
Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Dance Grand Happiness Life Mistress Route
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.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Blood Ourselves Remedy Revenge
Law and equity are two things which God has joined, but which man has put asunder.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Equity God Join Law
Insults are engendered from vulgar minds, like toadstools from a dunghill.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Insult Mindset Vulgar
The excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Age Old Youth
Physical courage, which despises all danger, will make a man brave in one way; and moral courage, which despises all opinion, will make a man brave in another.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Brave Courage Dangerous Man Opinion
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
Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Book Friendship Goodness
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

Anand Thakur
Unlike the sun, intellectual luminaries shine brightest after they set.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Bright Intellectual Shine Sun
He that swells in prosperity will be sure to shrink in adversity.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Adversity Himself Prosperity
Sturdy beggars can bear stout denials.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Bear Beggar Refusal
What would you do if you knew for sure that no one would ever find out?
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Choice Known Willing Yourself
Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Relative Rich Wealth
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.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Book Friendship Instruction Return True
Man is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Bundle Contradiction Man Paradox
Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Choice Evil Human Leave
Logic and metaphysics make use of more tools than all the rest of the sciences put together, and do the least work.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Logic Science Togetherness Tools Work

The true measure of your character is what you do when nobody’s watching.

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The true measure of your character is what you do when nobody’s watching.

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