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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
Company
Cautious
Talking
Sensible
Two
Improvement
Much
Conversation
Good
Lose
Things
Ought
Men
Loses
Doubly
Opinion
Lest

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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Taking things not as they ought to be, but as they are, I fear it must be allowed that Macchiavelli will always have more disciples than Jesus.
Charles Caleb Colton
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None of us are so much praised or censured as we think.
Charles Caleb Colton
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That author, however, who has thought more than he has read, read more than he has written, and written more than he has published, if he does not command success, has at least deserved it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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In civil jurisprudence it too often happens that there is so much law, that there is no room for justice, and that the claimant expires of wrong in the midst of right, as mariners die of thirst in the midst of water.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate the nearer we arrive unto it. For what do we truly know, or what can we clearly affirm, of any one of those important things upon which all our reasonings must of necessity be built--time and space, life and death, matter and mind?
Charles Caleb Colton
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That theatrical kind of virtue, which requires publicity for its stage, and an applauding world for its audience, could not be depended on, in the secrecy of solitude, or the retirement of a desert.
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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Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.
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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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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A fool is often as dangerous to deal with as a knave, and always more incorrigible.
Charles Caleb Colton
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God will excuse our prayers for ourselves whenever we are prevented from them by being occupied in such good works as to entitle us to the prayers of others.
Charles Caleb Colton
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That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Some men are very entertaining for a first interview, but after that they are exhausted, and run out on a second meeting we shall find them flat and monotonous like hand-organs, we have heard all their tunes.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The sceptic, when he plunges into the depths of infidelity, like the miser who leaps from the shipwreck, will find that the treasures which he bears about him will only sink him deeper in the abyss.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Five thousand years have added no improvement to the hive of the bee, nor to the house of the beaver but look at the habitations and the achievements of men!
Charles Caleb Colton
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Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate, the nearer we arrive unto it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Fame is an undertaker that pays but little attention to the living, but bedizens the dead, furnishes out their funerals, and follows them to the grave
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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No company is preferable to bad. We are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.
Charles Caleb Colton