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Charles Caleb Colton




  • He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place.





  • Wealth... is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much but wants more.





  • Courage is generosity of the highest order, for the brave are prodigal of the most precious things.





  • Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and hell a fable.





  • A house may draw visitors, but it is the possessor alone that can detain them.





  • It is good to act as if. It is even better to grow to the point where it is no longer an act.





  • If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; if you would know and not be known, live in a city.



  • There is a paradox in pride: it makes some men ridiculous, but prevents others from becoming so.





  • Never join with your friend when he abuses his horse or his wife unless the one is to be sold, and the other to be buried.





  • I have found by experience that they, who have spent all their lives in cities, improve their talents but impair virtues; and strengthen their minds but weaken their morals.





  • Pedantry crams out heads with learned lumber and takes out brains to make room for it.





  • 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.





  • If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself; all that runs over will be yours.





  • Ennui has made more gamblers than avarice, more drunkards than thirst, and perhaps as despair.





  • Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.





  • True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.





  • To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread.





  • Applause is the spur of noble minds, the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.





  • He that will not permit his wealth to do any good for others....cuts himself off from the truest pleasure here and the highest happiness later.





  • Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it, anything but live for it.





  • The man of pleasure, by a vain attempt to be more happy than any man can be, is often more miserable than most men.





  • We are sure to be loses when we quarrel with ourselves; it is civil war.





  • 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.





  • Times of general calamity and confusion have ever been productive of the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace, and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storms.





  • A windmill is eternally at work to accomplish one end, although it shifts with every variation of the weather cock, and assumes 10 different positions in a day.





  • The three great apostles of practical atheism that make converts without persecuting and retain them without preaching are wealth, Health and power.





  • 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.





  • Men spend their lives in anticipation, in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other - it is our own... we may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.





  • He that has cut the claws of the lion will not feel quite secure until he has also drawn his teeth.





  • Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship - never.





  • Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.





  • Success seems to be that which forms the distinction between confidence and conceit.





  • We hate some persons because we do not know them; and will not know them because we hate them.





  • He that has never suffered extreme adversity knows not the full extent of his own deprivation.





  • Eloquence is the language of nature, and cannot be learned in the schools; but rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least will most excel in.





  • There are three modes of bearing the ills of life; by indifference, by philosophy and by religion.





  • That cowardice is incorrigible which the love of power cannot overcome.





  • Body the mind, like man and wife, do not aways agree to die together.





  • Most of our misfortunes are comments of our friends upon them.





  • We own almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed, but to those who have differed.





  • Mystery is not profoundness.




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