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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.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Much
Conversation
Good
Lose
Things
Ought
Men
Loses
Doubly
Opinion
Lest
Company
Cautious
Talking
Sensible
Two
Improvement

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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If kings would only determine not to extend their dominions until they had filled them with happiness, they would find the smallest territories too large, but the longest life too short for the full accomplishment of so grand and so noble an ambition.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The awkwardness and embarrassment which all feel on beginning to write, when they themselves are the theme, ought to serve as a hint to author's that self is a subject they ought very rarely to descant upon.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Some reputed saints that have been canonized ought to have been cannonaded.
Charles Caleb Colton
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A man's profundity may keep him from opening on a first interview, and his caution on a second but I should suspect his emptiness, if he carried on his reserve to a third.
Charles Caleb Colton
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A Christian builds his fortitude on a better foundation than stoicism he is pleased with every thing that happens, because he knows it could not happen unless it first pleased God, and that which pleases Him must be best.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Antithesis may be the blossom of wit, but it will never arrive at maturity unless sound sense be the trunk and truth the root.
Charles Caleb Colton
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In order to try whether a vessel be leaky, we first prove it with water before we trust it with wine.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Pedantry prides herself on being wrong by rules while common sense is contented to be right without them.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Knavery is supple, and can bend, but honesty is firm and upright and yields not.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow but the misfortune is that in this particular case, the substance belongs to the shadow, the emptiness to its cause.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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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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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Sturdy beggars can bear stout denials.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is best, if possible, to deceive no one for he that ... begins by deceiving others, will end ... by deceiving himself.
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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He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice should go a little further, and try to plant a virtue in its place otherwise he will have his labor to renew. A strong soil that has produced weeds may be made to produce wheat with far less difficulty than it would cost to make it produce nothing.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Neutrality is no favorite with Providence, for we are so formed that it is scarcely possible for us to stand neuter in our hearts, although we may deem it prudent to appear so in our actions
Charles Caleb Colton
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Most importantly: Don't adjust your results to build up the ego of the chief strategist. Especially if the strategist is you.
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 since the most absurd doctrines are not without such evidence as martyrdom can produce. A martyr, therefore, by the mere act of suffering, can prove nothing but his own faith.
Charles Caleb Colton
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If once a woman breaks through the barriers of decency, her ease is desperate and if she goes greater lengths than the men, and leaves the pale of propriety farther behind her, it is because she is aware that all return is prohibited, and by none so strongly as by her own sex.
Charles Caleb Colton