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Diffidence is the better part of knowledge.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Diffidence
Uncertainty
Knowledge
Part
Better

More quotes by 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.
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Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.
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The acquirements of science may be termed the armour of the mind but that armour would be worse than useless, that cost us all we had, and left us nothing to defend.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The greatest and most amiable privilege which the rich enjoy over the poor is that which they exercise the least--the privilege of making others happy.
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A coxcomb begins by determining that his own profession is the first and he finishes by deciding that he is the first of profession.
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The integrity that lives only on opinion would starve without it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Genius, in one respect, is like gold numbers of persons are constantly writing about both, who have neither.
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Envy ought to have no place allowed it in the hearts of people for the goods of this present world are so vile and low that they are beneath it and those of the future world are so vast and exalted that they are above it.
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Genius in one grand particular is like life. We know nothing of either but by their effects.
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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Words are in this respect like water, that they often take their taste, flavour, and character, from the mouth out of which they proceed, as the water from the channel through which it flows.
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Whenever we find ourselves more inclined to persecute than to persuade, we may then be certain that our zeal has more of pride in it than of charity.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Insults are engendered from vulgar minds, like toadstools from a dunghill.
Charles Caleb Colton
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We often pretend to fear what we really despise, and more often despise what we really fear.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The wise man has his follies, no less than the fool but it has been said that herein lies the difference--the follies of the fool are known to the world, but hidden from himself the follies of the wise are known to himself, but hidden from the world.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Where we cannot invent, we may at least improve we may give somewhat of novelty to that which was old, condensation to that which was diffuse, perspicuity to that which was obscure, and currency to that which was recondite.
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There are three difficulties in authorship-to write any thing worth the publishing-to find honest men to publish it -and to get sensible men to read it. Literature has now become a game in which the Booksellers are the Kings The Critics the Knaves the Public, the Pack and the poor Author, the mere table, or the Thing played upon.
Charles Caleb Colton
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We may anticipate bliss, but who ever drank of that enchanted cup unalloved?
Charles Caleb Colton
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The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum.
Charles Caleb Colton
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To admit that there is any such thing as chance, in the common acceptation of the term, would be to attempt to establish a power independent of God.
Charles Caleb Colton