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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.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Within
Surrounded
Death
Circle
Another
Circles
Scorpion
Like
Envy
Scorpions
Prosperity
Sting
Gratitude
Envied
Sides
Brightness
Fire
Confined

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A high degree of intellectual refinement in the female is the surest pledge society can have for the improvement of the male.
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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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Make no enemies he is insignificant indeed that can do thee no harm.
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It is not so difficult a task to plant new truths, as to root out old errors for there is this paradox in men, they run after that which is new, but are prejudiced in favor of that which is old.
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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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A power above all human responsibility ought to be above all human attainment.
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There are three kinds of praise, that which we yield, that which we lend, and that which we pay. We yield it to the powerful from fear, we lend it to the weak from interest, and we pay it to the deserving from gratitude.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Insults are engendered from vulgar minds, like toadstools from a dunghill.
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Sincerely to aspire after virtue, is to gain her and zealously to labour after her wages, is to receive them.
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When I meet with any persons who write obscurely or converse confusedly, I am apt to suspect two things first, that such persons do not understand themselves and secondly, that they are not worthy of being understood by others.
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If a book really wants the patronage of a great name, it is a bad book and if it be a good book, it wants it not.
Charles Caleb Colton
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No propagation or multiplication is more rapid that that of evil, unless it be checked no growth more certain.
Charles Caleb Colton
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God is as great in minuteness as He is in magnitude.
Charles Caleb Colton
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When the air balloon was first discovered, some one flippantly asked Dr. Franklin what was the use of it. The doctor answered this question by asking another: What is the use of a new-born infant? It may become a man.
Charles Caleb Colton
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From the preponderance of talent, we may always infer the soundness and vigour of the commonwealth but from the preponderance of riches, its dotage and degeneration.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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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The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world.
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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There are two things that bestow consequence great possession, or great debts.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Flattery is often a traffic of mutual meanness, where although both parties intend deception, neither are deceived.
Charles Caleb Colton