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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

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Never
Failing
Like
Return
Books
Cloy
Friends
Instruct
True
Cease
Wells
Chosen
Book
Library
Well
Fail

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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In all societies, it is advisable to associate if possible with the highest not that the highest are always the best, but because, if disgusted there, we can descend at any time but if we begin with the lowest, to ascend is impossible.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Love is an alliance of friendship and animalism if the former predominates it is passion exalted and refined if the latter, gross and sensual.
Charles Caleb Colton
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We should not be too niggardly in our praise, for men will do more to support a character than to raise one.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice makes concerning wealth. She begins by accumulating power as a means to happiness, and she finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end.
Charles Caleb Colton
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There are two things that bestow consequence great possession, or great debts.
Charles Caleb Colton
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No two things differ more than hurry and despatch. Hurry is the mark of a weak mind despatch of a strong one.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is doubtful whether mankind are most indebted to those who like Bacon and Butler dig the gold from the mine of literature, or to those who, like Paley, purify it, stamp it, fix its real value, and give it currency and utility
Charles Caleb Colton
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Expect not praise without envy until you are dead.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The head of dullness, unlike the tail of the torpedo, loses nothing of the benumbing and lethargizing influence by reiterated discharges.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
Charles Caleb Colton
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To judge by the event is an error all commit: for in every instance courage, if crowned with success, is heroism if clouded by defeat, temerity. When Nelson fought his battle in the Sound, it was the result alone that decided whether he was to kiss a hand at court or a rod at a court-martial.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Time, the cradle of hope, but the grave of ambition, is the stern corrector of fools, but the salutary counselor of the wise, bringing all they dread to the one, and all they desire to the other.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Avarice has ruined more souls than extravagance.
Charles Caleb Colton
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He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool since the most absurd doctrines are not without such evidence as martyrdom can produce. A martyr, therefore, by the mere act of suffering, can prove nothing but his own faith.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity as to those mysterious powers assumed by others.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Hope is a prodigal young heir, and experience is his banker.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Some indeed there are who profess to despise all flattery, but even these are nevertheless to be flattered, by being told that they do despise it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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True friendship is like sound health the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Attempts at reform, when they fail, strengthen despotism, as he that struggles tightens those cords he does not succeed in breaking.
Charles Caleb Colton
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By privileges, immunities, or prerogatives to give unlimited swing to the passions of individuals, and then to hope that they will restrain them, is about as reasonable as to expect that the tiger will spare the hart to browse upon the herbage.
Charles Caleb Colton