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The interests of society often render it expedient not to utter the whole truth, the interests of science never: for in this field we have much more to fear from the deficiency of truth than from its abundance.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Whole
Field
Much
Fields
Never
Interest
Expedient
Society
Deficiency
Fear
Render
Often
Utter
Science
Abundance
Truth
Interests

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The whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other
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Perfection doesn't exist... only good attempts.
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He that can enjoy the intimacy of the great, and on no occasion disgust them by familiarity, or disgrace himself by servility, proves that he is as perfect a gentleman by nature as his companions are by rank.
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Envy, if surrounded on all sides by the brightness of another's prosperity, like the scorpion confined within a circle of fire, will sting itself to death.
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The head of dullness, unlike the tail of the torpedo, loses nothing of the benumbing and lethargizing influence by reiterated discharges.
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Where we cannot invent, we may at least improve we may give somewhat of novelty to that which was old, condensation to that which was diffuse, perspicuity to that which was obscure, and currency to that which was recondite.
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Any one can give advice, such as it is, but only a wise man knows how to profit by it.
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Attempts at reform, when they fail, strengthen despotism, as he that struggles tightens those cords he does not succeed in breaking.
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Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
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When we are in the company of sensible men, we ought to be doubly cautious of talking too much, lest we lose two good things, their good opinion and our own improvement for what we have to say we know, but what they have to say we know not.
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We devote the activity of our youth to revelry and the decrepitude of our old age to repentance: and we finish the farce by bequeathing our dead bodies to the chancel, which when living, we interdicted from the church.
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The family is the most basic unit of government. As the first community to which a person is attached and the first authority under which a person learns to live, the family establishes society's most basic values.
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To dare to live alone is the rarest courage since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.
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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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Revenge is a debt, in the paying of which the greatest knave is honest and sincere, and, so far as he is able, punctual.
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Sturdy beggars can bear stout denials.
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Many books owe their success to the good memories of their authors and the bad memories of their readers.
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If it be true that men of strong imaginations are usually dogmatists--and I am inclined to think it is so--it ought to follow that men of weak imaginations are the reverse in which case we should have some compensation for stupidity. But it unfortunately happens that no dogmatist is more obstinate or less open to conviction than a fool.
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Novels may teach us as wholesome a moral as the pulpit. There are sermons in stones, in healthy books, and good in everything.
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A fool is often as dangerous to deal with as a knave, and always more incorrigible.
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