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There are three difficulties in authorship-to write any thing worth the publishing-to find honest men to publish it -and to get sensible men to read it. Literature has now become a game in which the Booksellers are the Kings The Critics the Knaves the Public, the Pack and the poor Author, the mere table, or the Thing played upon.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
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Charles Colton
Three
Honest
Tables
Pack
Become
Public
Critics
Packs
Find
Literature
Difficulty
Publish
Writing
Games
Played
Publishing
Thing
Poor
Kings
Difficulties
Men
Upon
Mere
Sensible
Booksellers
Read
Worth
Author
Knaves
Write
Game
Table
Authorship

More quotes by 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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It is with honesty in one particular as with wealth,--those that have the thing care less about the credit of it than those who have it not. No poor man can well afford to be thought so, and the less of honesty a finished rogue possesses the less he can afford to be supposed to want it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Fashion ... has brought every thing into vogue, by turns.
Charles Caleb Colton
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When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is much easier to ruin a man of principle than a man of none, for he may be ruined through his scruples. Knavery is supple and can bend but honesty is firm and upright, and yields not.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Neither can we admit that definition of genius that some would propose--a power to accomplish all that we undertake for we might multiply examples to prove that this definition of genius contains more than the thing defined. Cicero failed in poetry, Pope in painting, Addison in oratory yet it would be harsh to deny genius to these men.
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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You cannot separate charity and religion.
Charles Caleb Colton
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If merited, no courage can stand against its just indignation.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Theory is worth but little, unless it can explain its own phenomena, and it must effect this without contradicting itself therefore, the facts are sometimes assimilated to the theory, rather than the theory to the facts.
Charles Caleb Colton
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There are two principles of established acceptance in morals first, that self-interest is the mainspring of all of our actions, and secondly, that utility is the test of their value.
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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Mystery magnifies danger, as a fog the sun, the hand that warned Belshazzar derived its horrifying effect from the want of a body.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Life isn't like a book. Life isn't logical or sensible or orderly. Life is a mess most of the time. And theology must be lived in the midst of that mess.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Love, like the cold bath, is never negative, it seldom leaves us where it finds us if once we plunge into it, it will either heighten our virtues, or inflame our vices.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Pedantry crams our heads with learned lumber and takes out our brains to make room for it.
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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Knavery is supple, and can bend, but honesty is firm and upright and yields not.
Charles Caleb Colton
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There can be no Christianity where there is no charity
Charles Caleb Colton