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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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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Wisdom
Happiness
Young
Follies
Mistaken
Gravity
Folly
Fancy

More quotes by 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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Opinions, like showers, are generated in high places, but they invariably descend into lower ones, and ultimately flow down to the people as rain unto the sea.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Accustom yourself to submit on all and every occasion, and on the most minute, no less than on the most important circumstances of life, to a small present evil, to obtain a greater distant good. This will give decision, tone, and energy to the mind, which, thus disciplined, will often reap victory from defeat and honor from repulse.
Charles Caleb Colton
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That extremes beget extremes is an apothegm built on the most profound observation of the human mind.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Speaking generally, no man appears great to his contemporaries, for the same reason that no man is great to his servants--both know too much of him.
Charles Caleb Colton
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A fool is often as dangerous to deal with as a knave, and always more incorrigible.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.
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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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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A cool blooded and crafty politician, when he would be thoroughly revenged on his enemy, makes the injuries which have been inflicted, not on himself, but on others, the pretext of his attack. He thus engages the world as a partisan in his quarrel, and dignifies his private hate, by giving it the air of disinterested resentment.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Shakespeare, Butler and Bacon have rendered it extremely difficult for all who come after them to be sublime, witty or profound.
Charles Caleb Colton
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As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.
Charles Caleb Colton
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When I meet with any persons who write obscurely or converse confusedly, I am apt to suspect two things first, that such persons do not understand themselves and secondly, that they are not worthy of being understood by others.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The French have a saying that whatever excellence a man may exhibit in a public station he is very apt to be ridiculous in a private one.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The integrity that lives only on opinion would starve without it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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In pulpit eloquence, the grand difficulty lies here--to give the subject all the dignity it so fully deserves, without attaching any importance to ourselves. The Christian messenger cannot think too highly of his prince, nor too humbly of himself.
Charles Caleb Colton
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In science, reason is the guide in poetry, taste. The object of the one is truth, which is uniform and indivisible the object of the other is beauty, which is multiform and varied.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The three great apostles of practical atheism, that make converts without persecuting, and retain them without preaching, are wealth, health and power.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Sleep, the type of death, is also, like that which it typifies, restricted to the earth. It flies from hell and is excluded from heaven.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Gaming is the child of avarice, but the parent of prodigality.
Charles Caleb Colton