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We are not more ingenious in searching out bad motives for good actions when performed by others, than good motives for bad actions when performed by ourselves.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
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Charles Colton
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Discovery
Atheism
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More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Truth can hardly be expected to adapt herself to the crooked policy and wily sinuosities of worldly affairs for truth, like light, travels only in straight lines.
Charles Caleb Colton
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When all run by common consent into vice, none appear to do so.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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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None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Time is the measurer of all things, but is itself immeasurable, and the grand discloser of all things, but is itself undisclosed.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Logic is a large drawer, containing some useful instruments, and many more that are superfluous. A wise man will look into it for two purposes, to avail himself of those instruments that are really useful, and to admire the ingenuity with which those that are not so, are assorted and arranged.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Sincerely to aspire after virtue, is to gain her and zealously to labour after her wages, is to receive them.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Women that are the least bashful are often the most modest.
Charles Caleb Colton
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A lady of fashion will sooner excuse a freedom flowing from admiration than a slight resulting from indifference.
Charles Caleb Colton
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No disorders have employed so many quacks, as those that have no cure and no sciences have exercised so many quills, as those that have no certainty.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is astonishing how much more anxious people are to lengthen life than to improve it and as misers often lose large sums of money in attempting to make more, so do hypochondriacs squander large sums of time in search of nostrums by which they vainly hope they may get more time to squander.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is curious that we pay statesmen for what they say, not for what they do and judge of them from what they do, not from what they say. Hence they have one code of maxims for profession and another for practice, and make up their consciences as the Neapolitans do their beds, with one set of furniture for show and another for use.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Professors in every branch of the sciences, prefer their own theories to truth: the reason is that their theories are private property, but truth is common stock.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Villains are usually the worst casuists, and rush into crimes to avoid less. Henry VIII. committed murder to avoid the imputation of adultery and in our times, those who commit the latter crime attempt to wash off the stain of seducing the wife by signifying their readiness to shoot the husband.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Nothing is more durable than the dynasty of Doubt for he reigns in the hearts of all his people, but gives satisfaction to none of them, and yet he is the only despot who can never die, while any of his subjects live.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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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Knavery is supple, and can bend, but honesty is firm and upright and yields not.
Charles Caleb Colton