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Contemporaries appreciate the person rather than their merit, posterity will regard the merit rather than the person.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Merit
Regard
Appreciate
Memories
Literature
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Persons
Contemporaries
Person
Posterity

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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There are three modes of bearing the ills of life by indifference, which is the most common by philosophy, which is the most ostentatious and by religion, which is the most effectual.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Few things are more agreeable to self-love than revenge, and yet no cause so effectually restrains us from revenge as self-love. And this paradox naturally suggests another that the strength of the community is not unfrequently built upon the weakness of those individuals that compose it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Most men know what they hate, few what they love.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is sufficiently humiliating to our nature to reflect that our knowledge is but as she rivulet, our ignorance as the sea. On points of the highest interest, the moment we quit the light of revelation we shall find that Platonism itself is intimately connected with Pyrrhonism, and the deepest inquiry with the darkest doubt.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Light, whether it be material or moral, is the best reformer.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Persecuting bigots may be compared to those burning lenses which Lenhenboeck and others composed from ice by their chilling apathy they freeze the suppliant by their fiery zeal they burn the sufferer.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The most ridiculous of all animals is a proud priest he cannot use his own tools without cutting his own fingers.
Charles Caleb Colton
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We injure mysteries, which are matters of faith by any attempt at explanation in order to make them matters of reason.
Charles Caleb Colton
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There are two way of establishing a reputation, one to be praised by honest people and the other to be accused by rogues. It is best, however, to secure the first one, because it will always be accompanied by the latter.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Where true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a pretext for a thousand.
Charles Caleb Colton
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As there are none so weak that we may venture to injure them with impunity, so there are none so low that they may not at some time be able to repay an obligation. Therefore, what benevolence would dictate, prudence would confirm.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The upright, if he suffer calumny to move him, fears the tongue of man more than the eye of God.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Temperate men drink the most, because they drink the longest.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Idleness is the grand Pacific Ocean of life, and in that stagnant abyss the most salutary things produce no good, the most noxious no evil. Vice, indeed, abstractedly considered, may be, and often is engendered in idleness but the moment it becomes efficiently vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Flattery is often a traffic of mutual meanness, where although both parties intend deception, neither are deceived.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The present time has one advantage over every other -- it is our own.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Men pursue riches under the idea that their possession will set them at ease, and above the world. But the law of association often makes those who begin by loving gold as a servant finish by becoming themselves its slaves and independence without wealth is at least as common as wealth without independence.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Wealth is a relative thing since those who have little and want less are richer than those who have much but want more.
Charles Caleb Colton
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No propagation or multiplication is more rapid that that of evil, unless it be checked no growth more certain.
Charles Caleb Colton