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Constant success shows us but one side of the world. For as it surrounds us with friends who will tell us only our merits, so it silences those enemies from whom alone we can learn our defects.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Enemy
Surround
Alone
Merit
Friends
Enemies
Success
Achievement
Learn
Constant
Silences
Tell
Silence
Surrounds
Shows
Side
Merits
World
Sides
Defects

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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The present time has one advantage over every other -- it is our own.
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In death itself there can be nothing terrible, for the act of death annihilates sensation but there are many roads to death, and some of them justly formidable, even to the bravest.
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The poorest man would not part with health for money, but the richest would gladly part with all their money for health.
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The two most precious things this side of the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other.
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Those that know the least of others think the highest of themselves.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Philosophy is a goddess, whose head indeed is in heaven, but whose feet are upon earth she attempts more than she accomplishes, and promises more than she performs.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Were the life of man prolonged, he would become such a proficient in villainy, that it would become necessary again to drown or to burn the world. Earth would become an hell for future rewards when put off to a great distance, would cease to encourage, and future punishments to alarm.
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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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Memory is the friend of wit, but the treacherous ally of invention there are many books that owe their success to two things good memory of those who write them, and the bad memory of those who read them
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.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.
Charles Caleb Colton
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He that swells in prosperity will be sure to shrink in adversity.
Charles Caleb Colton
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That an author's work is the mirror of his mind is a position that has led to very false conclusions. If Satan himself were to write a book it would be in praise of virtue, because the good would purchase it for use, and the bad for ostentation.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Secrecy is the soul of all great designs. Perhaps more has been effected by concealing our own intentions than by discovering those of our enemy.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is a common observation that any fool can get money but they are not wise that think so.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Pride, like the magnet, constantly points to one object, self but, unlike the magnet, it has no attractive pole, but at all points repels.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The enthusiast has been compared to a man walking in a fog everything immediately around him, or in contact with him, appears sufficiently clear and luminous but beyond the little circle of which he himself is the centre, all is mist and error and confusion.
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When all run by common consent into vice, none appear to do so.
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