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Men's arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Argument
Prove
Wish
Often
Nothing
Men
Arguments
Wishes

More quotes by 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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Heroism, self-denial, and magnanimity, in all instances where they do not spring from a principle of religion, are but splendid altars on which we sacrifice one kind of self-love to another.
Charles Caleb Colton
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When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is seldom that statesmen have the option of choosing between a good and an evil.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Duke Chartres used to boast that no man could have less real value for character than himself, yet he would gladly give twenty thousand pounds for a good one, because he could immediately make double that sum by means of it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Discretion has been termed the better part of valour, and it is more certain, that diffidence is the better part of knowledge.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Genius, in one respect, is like gold numbers of persons are constantly writing about both, who have neither.
Charles Caleb Colton
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As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Hope is a prodigal young heir, and Experience is his banker but his drafts are seldom honoured, since there is often a heavy balance against him, because he draws largely on a small capital, is not yet in possession, and if he were, would die.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The Grecian’s maxim would indeed be a sweeping clause in Literature it would reduce many a giant to a pygmy many a speech to a sentence and many a folio to a primer.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Some philosophers would give a sex to revenge, and appropriate it almost exclusively to the female mind. But, like most other vices, it is of both genders yet, because wounded vanity and slighted love are the two most powerful excitements to revenge, it has been thought, perhaps, to rage with more violence in the female heart.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The most notorious swindler has not assumed so many names as self-love, nor is so much ashamed of his own. She calls herself patriotism, when at the same time she is rejoicing at just as much calamity to her native country as will introduce herself into power, and expel her rivals.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Women generally consider consequences in love, seldom in resentment.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Wealth is a relative thing since those who have little and want less are richer than those who have much but want more.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Tomorrow! It is a period nowhere to be found in all the registers of time, unless, perchance, in the fool's calendar.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Temperate men drink the most, because they drink the longest.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Self-denial is often the sacrifice of one sort of self-love for another.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Avarice begets more vices than Priam did children and like Priam survives them all. It starves its keeper to surfeit those who wish him dead, and makes him submit to more mortifications to lose heaven than the martyr undergoes to gain it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Men are more readily contented with no intellectual light than with a little and wherever they have been taught to acquire some knowledge in order to please others, they have most generally gone on to acquire more, to please themselves.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Many a man may thank his talent for his rank, but no man has ever been able to return the compliment by thanking his rank for his talent.
Charles Caleb Colton