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The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Equal
Vacuums
Head
Vacuum
Fall
Feathers
Superficial
Soundest
Conviction
Declamation
Argument
Feather
Empty
Guinea
Produce
Velocity

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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The man of pleasure, by a vain attempt to be more happy than any man can be, is often more miserable than most men are.
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The most zealous converters are always the most rancorous when they fail of producing conversion.
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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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It was served of the Jesuits, that they constantly inculcated a thorough contempt of worldly things in their doctrines, but eagerly grasped at them in their lives. They were wise in their generation for they cried down worldly things because they wanted to obtain them, and cried up spiritual things, because they wanted to dispose of them.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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.
Charles Caleb Colton
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In all societies, it is advisable to associate if possible with the highest not that the highest are always the best, but because, if disgusted there, we can descend at any time but if we begin with the lowest, to ascend is impossible.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The seeds of repentance are sown in youth by pleasure, but the harvest is reaped in age by pain.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Constant success shows us but one side of the world adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The only kind office performed for us by our friends of which we never complain is our funeral and the only thing which we most want, happens to be the only thing we never purchase--our coffin.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Doubt is the vestibule of faith.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The integrity that lives only on opinion would starve without it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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War kills men, and men deplore the loss but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies.
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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That extremes beget extremes is an apothegm built on the most profound observation of the human mind.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Courage is generosity of the highest order, for the brave are prodigal of the most precious things.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Our wealth is often a snare to ourselves, and always a temptation to others.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The plainest man that can convince a woman that he is really in love with her has done more to make her in love with him than the handsomest man, if he can produce no such conviction. For the love of woman is a shoot, not a seed, and flourishes most vigorously only when ingrafted on that love which is rooted in the breast of another.
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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Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Men's arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.
Charles Caleb Colton