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Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
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Charles Colton
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More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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It is a mortifying truth, and ought to teach the wisest of us humility, that many of the most valuable discoveries have been the result of chance rather than of contemplation, and of accident rather than of design.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Habit will reconcile us to everything but change
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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Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Any one can give advice, such as it is, but only a wise man knows how to profit by it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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An act by which we make one friend and one enemy is a losing game because revenge is a much stronger principle than gratitude
Charles Caleb Colton
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We should not be too niggardly in our praise, for men will do more to support a character than to raise one.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The mob is a monster, with the hands of Briareus, but the head of Polyphemus,--strong to execute, but blind to perceive.
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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Some philosophers would give a sex to revenge, and appropriate it almost exclusively to the female mind. But, like most other vices, it is of both genders yet, because wounded vanity and slighted love are the two most powerful excitements to revenge, it has been thought, perhaps, to rage with more violence in the female heart.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Love is an alliance of friendship and animalism if the former predominates it is passion exalted and refined if the latter, gross and sensual.
Charles Caleb Colton
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That alliance may be said to have a double tie, where the minds are united as well as the body and the union will have all its strength when both the links are in perfection together.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Sincerely to aspire after virtue, is to gain her and zealously to labour after her wages, is to receive them.
Charles Caleb Colton
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We hate some persons because we do not know them and will not know them because we hate them.
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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A lady of fashion will sooner excuse a freedom flowing from admiration than a slight resulting from indifference.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow.
Charles Caleb Colton
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He that is good will infallibly become better, and he that is bad will as certainly become worse for vice, virtue, and time are three things that never stand still.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Drunkenness is the vice of a good constitution or of a bad memory of a constitution so treacherously good that it never bends till it breaks or of a memory that recollects the pleasures of getting intoxicated, but forgets the pains of getting sober.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Honesty is not only the deepest policy, but the highest wisdom since, however difficult it may be for integrity to get on, it is a thousand times more difficult for knavery to get off and no error is more fatal than that of those who think that Virtue has no other reward because they have heard that she is her own.
Charles Caleb Colton