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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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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
May
Letting
Best
Harm
Sometimes
Morality
Asking
Cases
Question
Doubtful
Alone
Answered
Another
Usual

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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A wise minister would rather preserve peace than gain a victory, because he knows that even the most successful war leaves nations generally more poor, always more profligate, than it found them.
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Some men who know that they are great are so very haughty withal and insufferable that their acquaintance discover their greatness only by the tax of humility which they are obliged to pay as the price of their friendship.
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Style is indeed the valet of genius, and an able one too but as the true gentleman will appear, even in rags, so true genius will shine, even through the coarsest style.
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God is on the side of virtue for whoever dreads punishment suffers it, and whoever deserves it, dreads it .
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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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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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Man is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions.
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The cynic who twitted Aristippus by observing that the philosopher who could dine on herbs might despise the company of a king, was well replied to by Aristippus, when he remarked that the philosopher who could enjoy the company or a king might also despise a dinner of herbs.
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Time, the cradle of hope, but the grave of ambition, is the stern corrector of fools, but the salutary counselor of the wise, bringing all they dread to the one, and all they desire to the other.
Charles Caleb Colton
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As a man of pleasure, by a vain attempt to be more happy than any man can be, is often more miserable than most men are, so the sceptic, in a vain attempt to be wise beyond what is permitted to man, plunges into a darkness more deplorable, and a blindness more incurable than that of the common herd, whom he despises, and would fain instruct.
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He who knows himself knows others.
Charles Caleb Colton
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So blinded are we by our passions, that we suffer more to be damned than to be saved.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is adverse to talent to be consorted and trained up with inferior minds and inferior companions, however high they may rank. The foal of the racer neither finds out his speed nor calls out his powers if pastured out with the common herd, that are destined for the collar and the yoke.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Reply to wit with gravity, and to gravity with wit.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Opinions, like showers, are generated in high places, but they invariably descend into lower ones, and ultimately flow down to the people as rain unto the sea.
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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Power, like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer it dignifies meanness it magnifies littleness to what is contemptible, it gives authority to what is low, exaltation.
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Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.
Charles Caleb Colton
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When a man has displayed talent in some particular path, and left all competitors behind him in it, the world are too apt to give him credit for universality of genius, and to anticipate for him success in all that he undertakes.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Diffidence is the better part of knowledge.
Charles Caleb Colton