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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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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Trust
Whether
Water
Order
Leaky
Firsts
Prudence
First
Vessel
Trying
Wine
Prove

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself all that runs over will be yours.
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
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I have found by experience that they who have spent all their lives in cities, improve their talents but impair their virtues and strengthen their minds but weaken their morals.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is not so difficult a task to plant new truths, as to root out old errors for there is this paradox in men, they run after that which is new, but are prejudiced in favor of that which is old.
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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Men pursue riches under the idea that their possession will set them at ease, and above the world. But the law of association often makes those who begin by loving gold as a servant finish by becoming themselves its slaves and independence without wealth is at least as common as wealth without independence.
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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Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice makes concerning wealth. She begins by accumulating power as a means to happiness, and she finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Physicians must discover the weaknesses of the human mind, and even condescend to humor them, or they will never be called in to cure the infirmities of the body.
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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We shall at all times chance upon men of recondite acquirements, but whose qualifications, from the incommunicative and inactive habits of their owners, are as utterly useless to others as though the possessors had them not.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance.
Charles Caleb Colton
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From the preponderance of talent, we may always infer the soundness and vigour of the commonwealth but from the preponderance of riches, its dotage and degeneration.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Fortune has been considered the guardian divinity of fools and, on this score, she has been accused of blindness but it should rather be adduced as a proof of her sagacity, when she helps those who cannot help themselves.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The interests of society often render it expedient not to utter the whole truth, the interests of science never: for in this field we have much more to fear from the deficiency of truth than from its abundance.
Charles Caleb Colton
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We ought not to be over-anxious to encourage innovation in cases of doubtful improvement, for an old system must ever have two advantages over a new one it is established, and it is understood.
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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The code of poor laws has at length grown up into a tree, which, like the fabulous Upas, overshadows and poisons the land unwholesome expedients were the bud, dilemmas and depravities have been the blossom, and danger and despair are the bitter fruit.
Charles Caleb Colton
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All poets pretend to write for immortality, but the whole tribe have no objection to present pay, and present praise. Lord Burleigh is not the only statesman who has thought one hundred pounds too much for a song, though sung by Spenser although Oliver Goldsmith is the only poet who ever considered himself to have been overpaid.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Be very slow to believe that you are wiser than all others it is a fatal but common error. Where one has been saved by a true estimation of another's weakness, thousands have been destroyed by a false appreciation of their own strength.
Charles Caleb Colton