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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
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Better

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All adverse and depressing influences can be overcome, not by fighting, by by rising above them.
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The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility.
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Temperate men drink the most, because they drink the longest.
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Fortune, like other females, prefers a lover to a master, and submits with impatience to control but he that wooes her with opportunity and importunity will seldom court her in vain.
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God is as great in minuteness as He is in magnitude.
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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.
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He that swells in prosperity will be sure to shrink in adversity.
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Butler compared the tongues of these eternal talkers to race-horses, which go the faster the less weight they carry.
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Some persons will tell you, with an air of the miraculous, that they recovered although they were given over whereas they might with more reason have said, they recovered because they were given over.
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He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool since the most absurd doctrines are not without such evidence as martyrdom can produce. A martyr, therefore, by the mere act of suffering, can prove nothing but his own faith.
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We submit to the society of those that can inform us, but we seek the society of those whom we can inform. And men of genius ought not to be chagrined if they see themselves neglected. For when we communicate knowledge, we are raised in our own estimation but when we receive it, we are lowered.
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Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance.
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A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition.
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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.
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Folly disgusts us less by her ignorance than pedantry by her learning.
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The press is the foe of rhetoric, but the friend of reason.
Charles Caleb Colton
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He that studies only men will get the body of knowledge without the soul and he that studies only books, the soul without the body.
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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Hope is a prodigal young heir, and experience is his banker.
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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