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Repartee is perfect when it effects its purpose with a double edge. It is the highest order of wit, as it indicates the coolest yet quickest exercise of genius, at a moment when the passions are roused.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
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More quotes by 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.
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There is more jealousy between rival wits than rival beauties, for vanity has no sex. But in both cases there must be pretensions, or there will be no jealousy.
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The learned languages are indispensable to form the gentleman and the scholar, and are well worth all the labor that they have cost us, provided they are valued not for themselves alone, which would make a pedant, but as a foundation for further acquirements.
Charles Caleb Colton
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As that gallant can best affect a pretended passion for one woman who has no true love for another, so he that has no real esteem for any of the virtues can best assume the appearance of them all.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Physical courage, which despises all danger, will make a man brave in one way and moral courage, which despises all opinion, will make a man brave in another.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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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Flattery is often a traffic of mutual meanness, where although both parties intend deception, neither are deceived.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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.
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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Those graces which from their presumed facility encourage all to attempt an imitation of them, are usually the most inimitable.
Charles Caleb Colton
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He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The acquirements of science may be termed the armour of the mind but that armour would be worse than useless, that cost us all we had, and left us nothing to defend.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Villainy that is vigilant will be an overmatch for virtue, if she slumber at her post.
Charles Caleb Colton
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There are many women who have never intrigued, and many men who have never gamed but those who have done either but once are very extraordinary animals.
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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It is seldom that statesmen have the option of choosing between a good and an evil.
Charles Caleb Colton
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When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
Charles Caleb Colton