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Pedantry prides herself on being wrong by rules while common sense is contented to be right without them.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Prudence
Rules
Pride
Wrong
Common
Sense
Prides
Without
Pedantry
Right
Contented

More quotes by 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.
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Despotism can no more exist in a nation until the liberty of the press be destroyed than the night can happen before the sun is set.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Fortune, like other females, prefers a lover to a master, and submits with impatience to control but he that wooes her with opportunity and importunity will seldom court her in vain.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The breast of a good man is a little heaven commencing on earth where the Deity sits enthroned with unrivaled influence, every subjugated passion, like the wind and storm, fulfilling his word.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Evils in the journey of life are like the hills which alarm travelers upon their road they both appear great at a distance, but when we approach them we find that they are far less insurmountable than we had conceived.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge.
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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The three great apostles of practical atheism, that make converts without persecuting, and retain them without preaching, are wealth, health and power.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Miss Edgeworth and Mme. de Stael have proved that there is no sex in style and Mme. la Roche Jacqueline, and the Duchesse d'Angouleme have proved that there is no sex in courage.
Charles Caleb Colton
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In cases of doubtful morality, it is usual to say is there any harm in doing this? This question may sometimes be best answered by asking ourselves another is there any harm in letting it alone?
Charles Caleb Colton
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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 present time has one advantage over every other -- it is our own.
Charles Caleb Colton
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A youth without fire is followed by an old age without experience.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The only kind office performed for us by our friends of which we never complain is our funeral and the only thing which we most want, happens to be the only thing we never purchase--our coffin.
Charles Caleb Colton
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All poets pretend to write for immortality, but the whole tribe have no objection to present pay, and present praise. Lord Burleigh is not the only statesman who has thought one hundred pounds too much for a song, though sung by Spenser although Oliver Goldsmith is the only poet who ever considered himself to have been overpaid.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.
Charles Caleb Colton
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I have found by experience that they who have spent all their lives in cities, improve their talents but impair their virtues and strengthen their minds but weaken their morals.
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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My lowest days as a Christian have been more fulfilling and rewarding than all the days of glory in the White House.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Words are in this respect like water, that they often take their taste, flavour, and character, from the mouth out of which they proceed, as the water from the channel through which it flows.
Charles Caleb Colton