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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
Wrong
Common
Sense
Prides
Without
Pedantry
Right
Contented
Prudence
Rules
Pride

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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Never join with your friend when he abuses his horse or his wife, unless the one is about to be sold, the other to be buried.
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Revenge is a much more punctual paymaster than gratitude
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The gamester, if he die a martyr to his profession, is doubly ruined. He adds his soul to every other loss, and by the act of suicide, renounces earth to forfeit Heaven.
Charles Caleb Colton
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In its primary signification, all vice, that is, all excess, brings on its own punishment, even here. By certain fixed, settled and established laws of Him who is the God of nature, excess of every kind destroys that constitution which temperance would preserve. The debauchee offers up his body a living sacrifice to sin.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Riches may enable us to confer favors, but to confer them with propriety and grace requires a something that riches cannot give.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Flattery is often a traffic of mutual meanness, where although both parties intend deception, neither are deceived.
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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He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice should go a little further, and try to plant a virtue in its place otherwise he will have his labor to renew. A strong soil that has produced weeds may be made to produce wheat with far less difficulty than it would cost to make it produce nothing.
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.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Be very slow to believe that you are wiser than all others it is a fatal but common error. Where one has been saved by a true estimation of another's weakness, thousands have been destroyed by a false appreciation of their own strength.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Some indeed there are who profess to despise all flattery, but even these are nevertheless to be flattered, by being told that they do despise it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them such persons covet secrets as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation.
Charles Caleb Colton
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A house may draw visitors, but it is the possessor alone that can detain them.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The firmest of friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Honesty is not only the deepest policy, but the highest wisdom since, however difficult it may be for integrity to get on, it is a thousand times more difficult for knavery to get off and no error is more fatal than that of those who think that Virtue has no other reward because they have heard that she is her own.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Literature has her quacks no less than medicine, and they are divided into two classes those who have erudition without genius, and those who have volubility without depth we shall get second-hand sense from the one, and original nonsense from the other.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Unity of opinion is indeed a glorious and desirable thing, and its circle cannot be too strong and extended, if the centre be truth but if the centre be error, the greater the circumference, the greater the evil.
Charles Caleb Colton
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That theatrical kind of virtue, which requires publicity for its stage, and an applauding world for its audience, could not be depended on, in the secrecy of solitude, or the retirement of a desert.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Men's arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice makes concerning wealth. She begins by accumulating power as a means to happiness, and she finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end.
Charles Caleb Colton