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The man of pleasure, by a vain attempt to be more happy than any man can be, is often more miserable than most men are.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Happy
Often
Men
Attempt
Vain
Miserable
Pleasure

More quotes by 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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He that studies books alone, will know how things ought to be and he that studies men, will know how things are.
Charles Caleb Colton
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If we look backwards to antiquity it should be as those that are winning a race.
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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Two things, well considered, would prevent many quarrels: first, to have it well ascertained whether we are not disputing about terms, rather than things and, secondly, to examine whether that on which we differ is worth contending about.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Words indeed are but the signs and counters of knowledge, and their currency should be strictly regulated by the capital which they represent.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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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Wit may do very well for a mistress, but [I] should prefer reason for a wife.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Wit in women is a jewel, which, unlike all others, borrows lustre from its setting, rather than bestows it since nothing is so easy as to fancy a very beautiful woman extremely witty.
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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Those that know the least of others think the highest of themselves.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other
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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Novels may teach us as wholesome a moral as the pulpit. There are sermons in stones, in healthy books, and good in everything.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Professors in every branch of the sciences, prefer their own theories to truth: the reason is that their theories are private property, but truth is common stock.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Never join with your friend when he abuses his horse or his wife, unless the one is about to be sold, the other to be buried.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Man is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The young fancy that their follies are mistaken by the old for happiness. The old fancy that their gravity is mistaken by the young for wisdom.
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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Self-love, in a well-regulated breast, is as the steward of the household, superintending the expenditure, and seeing that benevolence herself should be prudential, in order to be permanent, by providing that the reservoir which feeds should also be fed.
Charles Caleb Colton