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Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness when bequeathed by those who, even alive, would part with nothing.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Even
Selfishness
Would
Generosity
Charity
Essence
Posthumous
Alive
Bequeathed
Literature
Part
Charities
Nothing
Transcendentalism

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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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Too high an appreciation of our own talents is the chief cause why experience preaches to us all in vain.
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Envy, if surrounded on all sides by the brightness of another's prosperity, like the scorpion confined within a circle of fire, will sting itself to death.
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Those that know the least of others think the highest of themselves.
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He that will often put eternity and the world before him, and who will dare to look steadfastly at both of them, will find that the more often he contemplates them, the former will grow greater, and the latter less.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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.
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Some philosophers would give a sex to revenge, and appropriate it almost exclusively to the female mind. But, like most other vices, it is of both genders yet, because wounded vanity and slighted love are the two most powerful excitements to revenge, it has been thought, perhaps, to rage with more violence in the female heart.
Charles Caleb Colton
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He who knows himself knows others.
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Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow but the misfortune is that in this particular case, the substance belongs to the shadow, the emptiness to its cause.
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It is with honesty in one particular as with wealth,--those that have the thing care less about the credit of it than those who have it not. No poor man can well afford to be thought so, and the less of honesty a finished rogue possesses the less he can afford to be supposed to want it.
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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
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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.
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The mob is a monster, with the hands of Briareus, but the head of Polyphemus,--strong to execute, but blind to perceive.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Women generally consider consequences in love, seldom in resentment.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The man of pleasure, by a vain attempt to be more happy than any man can be, is often more miserable than most men are.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It has been shrewdly said, that when, men abuse us we should suspect ourselves, and when they praise us, them. It is a rare instance of virtue to despise which censure which we do not deserve and still more rare to despise praise which we do.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Hope is a prodigal young heir, and Experience is his banker but his drafts are seldom honoured, since there is often a heavy balance against him, because he draws largely on a small capital, is not yet in possession, and if he were, would die.
Charles Caleb Colton
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If you are under obligations to many, it is prudent to postpone the recompensing of one, until it be in your power to remunerate all otherwise you will make more enemies by what you give, than by what you withhold.
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Envy is the coward side of Hate, And all her ways are bleak and desolate.
Charles Caleb Colton