The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONIt is the briefest yet wisest maxim which tells us to meddle not.
More Charles Caleb Colton Quotes
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We ask advice but we mean approbation.
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Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish.
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There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.
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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.
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That cowardice is incorrigible which the love of power cannot overcome.
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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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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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Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores.
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A house may draw visitors, but it is the possessor alone that can detain them.
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No metaphysician ever felt the deficiency of language so much as the grateful.
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There are two principles of established acceptance in morals; first, that self-interest is the mainspring of all of our actions, and secondly, that utility is the test of their value.
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Self-denial is often the sacrifice of one sort of self-love for another.
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It is better to meet danger than to wait for it. He that is on a lee shore, and foresees a hurricane, stands out to sea and encounters a storm to avoid a shipwreck.
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A public debt is a kind of anchor in the storm; but if the anchor be too heavy for the vessel, she will be sunk by that very weight which was intended for her preservation.
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Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
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The two most precious things this side of the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other.
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A high degree of intellectual refinement in the female is the surest pledge society can have for the improvement of the male.
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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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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.
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In life we shall find many men that are great, and some that are good, but very few men that are both great and good.
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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.
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Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together.
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It is curious that some learned dunces, because they can write nonsense in languages that are dead, should despise those that talk sense in languages that are living.
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To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it: the pains of power are real, its pleasures imaginary.
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True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.
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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