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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
Gravity
Folly
Fancy
Wisdom
Happiness
Young
Follies
Mistaken

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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We strive as hard to hide our hearts from ourselves as from others, and always with more success for in deciding upon our own case we are both judge, jury, and executioner, and where sophistry cannot overcome the first, or flattery the second, self-love is always ready to defeat the sentence by bribing the third.
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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Those graces which from their presumed facility encourage all to attempt an imitation of them, are usually the most inimitable.
Charles Caleb Colton
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God will excuse our prayers for ourselves whenever we are prevented from them by being occupied in such good works as to entitle us to the prayers of others.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Great minds had rather deserve contemporaneous applause without obtaining it, than obtain without deserving it. If it follow them it is well, but they will not deviate to follow it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is curious that we pay statesmen for what they say, not for what they do and judge of them from what they do, not from what they say. Hence they have one code of maxims for profession and another for practice, and make up their consciences as the Neapolitans do their beds, with one set of furniture for show and another for use.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Some frauds succeed from the apparent candor, the open confidence, and the full blaze of ingenuousness that is thrown around them. The slightest mystery would excite suspicion and ruin all. Such stratagems may be compared to the stars they are discoverable by darkness and hidden only by light.
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
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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.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Honesty is not only the deepest policy, but the highest wisdom since, however difficult it may be for integrity to get on, it is a thousand times more difficult for knavery to get off and no error is more fatal than that of those who think that Virtue has no other reward because they have heard that she is her own.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Pride, like the magnet, constantly points to one object, self but, unlike the magnet, it has no attractive pole, but at all points repels.
Charles Caleb Colton
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You cannot separate charity and religion.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Expect not praise without envy until you are dead.
Charles Caleb Colton
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That an author's work is the mirror of his mind is a position that has led to very false conclusions. If Satan himself were to write a book it would be in praise of virtue, because the good would purchase it for use, and the bad for ostentation.
Charles Caleb Colton
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There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise.
Charles Caleb Colton
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A wise man may be duped as well as a fool but the fool publishes the triumph of his deceiver the wise man is silent, and denies that triumph to an enemy which he would hardly concede to a friend a triumph that proclaims his own defeat.
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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We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves it is civil war.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Mystery magnifies danger, as a fog the sun, the hand that warned Belshazzar derived its horrifying effect from the want of a body.
Charles Caleb Colton