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Diffidence is the better part of knowledge.

Charles Caleb Colton

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.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Curiosity Death Language Live Talk
Honor is the most capricious in her rewards. She feeds us with air, and often pulls down our house, to build our monument.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Build Food Home Honor Monument Ourselves Pull Reward
What would you do if you knew for sure that no one would ever find out?
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Choice Known Willing Yourself
Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Fashion Happiness Love Pride Starve
Pride is less ashamed of being ignorant, than of being instructed, and she looks too high to find that, which very often lies beneath her.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Beneath Herself Ignorance Lying Pride Shame
I have found by experience that they who have spent all their lives in cities, improve their talents but impair their virtues; and strengthen their minds but weaken their morals.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Experience Finding Improvement Live Moral Talent Weakness
We know the effects of many things, but the cause of few; experience, therefore, is a surer guide than imagination, and inquiry than conjecture.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Effect Experience Guide Imagination
Pure truth, like pure gold, has been found unfit for circulation because men have discovered that it is far more convenient to adulterate the truth than to refine themselves.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Adult Convinience Finding Purity Truth
There are both dull correctness and piquant carelessness; it is needless to say which will command the most readers and have the most influence.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Care Command Influence Reading
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.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Integrity Man Ourselves Price Purchase Virtue
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.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Avoid Better Dangerous Hurricane Shipwreck Storm Wait
Oppression cannot prosper where none will submit to be enslaved.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Oppression Prosperity Submit
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
Words indeed are but the signs and counters of knowledge, and their currency should be strictly regulated by the capital which they represent.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Capital Knowledge Regulation Representation Sign Word
War is a game in which princes seldom win, the people never.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Game People War Win
Deliberate with caution, but act with decision and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Act Decision Deliberate Firm Grace
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
Pedantry prides herself on being wrong by rules; while common sense is contented to be right without them.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Pride Right Rule Satisfaction Wrong
It is best, if possible, to deceive no one; for he that begins by deceiving others, will end by deceiving himself.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Beginning Best End Himself Possible
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
Imitation is the highest form of flattery.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Flattery Form High Imitation
To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Bitter Dare Enemy Live Rare
Physicians must discover the weaknesses of the human mind, and even condescend to humor them, or they will never be called in to cure the infirmities of the body.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Body Cure Discover Human Mindset Weakness
That cowardice is incorrigible which the love of power cannot overcome.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Coward Love Power
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
It may be observed of good writing, as of good blood, that it is much easier to say what it is composed of than to compose it.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Compose Goodness Observation Writing

Diffidence is the better part of knowledge.

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Diffidence is the better part of knowledge.

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