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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
Would
Generosity
Charity
Essence
Alive
Posthumous
Literature
Bequeathed
Part
Charities
Nothing
Transcendentalism
Even
Selfishness

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As the gout seems privileged to attack the bodies of the wealthy, so ennui seems to exert a similar prerogative over their minds.
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Pride requires very costly food-its keeper's happiness.
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Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.
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The present time has one advantage over every other -- it is our own.
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A wise man may be duped as well as a fool but the fool publishes the triumph of his deceiver the wise man is silent, and denies that triumph to an enemy which he would hardly concede to a friend a triumph that proclaims his own defeat.
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A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition.
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Folly disgusts us less by her ignorance than pedantry by her learning.
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The seat of perfect contentment is in the head for every individual is thoroughly satisfied with his own proportion of brains.
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The sun should not set upon our anger, neither should he rise upon our confidence. We should forgive freely, but forget rarely. I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy but I will remember, and this I owe to myself.
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Philosophers have widely differed as to the seat of the soul, and St. Paul has told us that out of the heart proceed murmurings but there can be no doubt that the seat of perfect contentment is in the head, for every individual is thoroughly satisfied with his own proportion of brains.
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Happiness is that single and glorious thing which is the very light and sun of the whole animated universe and where she is not it were better that nothing should be.
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If our eloquence be directed above the heads of our hearers, we shall do no execution. By pointing our arguments low, we stand a chance of hitting their hearts as well as their heads. In addressing angels, we could hardly raise our eloquence too high but we must remember that men are not angels.
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There is an elasticity in the human mind, capable of bearing much, but which will not show itself, until a certain weight of affliction be put upon it its powers may be compared to those vehicles whose springs are so contrived that they get on smoothly enough when loaded, but jolt confoundedly when they have nothing to bear.
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Time,- that black and narrow isthmus between two eternities.
Charles Caleb Colton
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What is earthly happiness? that phantom of which we hear so much, and see so little whose promises are constantly given and constantly broken, but as constantly believed that cheats us with the sound instead of the substance, and with the blossom instead of the fruit. Like Juno, she is a goddess in pursuit, but a cloud in possession.
Charles Caleb Colton
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There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise.
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The code of poor laws has at length grown up into a tree, which, like the fabulous Upas, overshadows and poisons the land unwholesome expedients were the bud, dilemmas and depravities have been the blossom, and danger and despair are the bitter fruit.
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The awkwardness and embarrassment which all feel on beginning to write, when they themselves are the theme, ought to serve as a hint to author's that self is a subject they ought very rarely to descant upon.
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The masses procure their opinions ready made in open market.
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Five thousand years have added no improvement to the hive of the bee, nor to the house of the beaver but look at the habitations and the achievements of men!
Charles Caleb Colton