Quote

Idleness is the grand Pacific Ocean of life, and in that stagnant abyss the most salutary things produce no good, the most noxious no evil. Vice, indeed, abstractedly considered, may be, and often is engendered in idleness but the moment it becomes efficiently vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Moment
Vices
Cradle
Often
Cease
Idleness
Moments
Considered
Abyss
Noxious
May
Indeed
Idle
Engendered
Must
Ocean
Grand
Salutary
Good
Produce
Quit
Efficiently
Things
Becomes
Vice
Stagnant
Life
Evil
Quitting
Pacific

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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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Envy is the coward side of Hate, And all her ways are bleak and desolate.
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The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves.
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Miss Edgeworth and Mme. de Stael have proved that there is no sex in style and Mme. la Roche Jacqueline, and the Duchesse d'Angouleme have proved that there is no sex in courage.
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Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together.
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Pleasure is to women what the sun is to the flower if moderately enjoyed, it beautifies, it refreshes, and it improves if immoderately, it withers, deteriorates and destroys.
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The good opinion of our fellow men is the strongest, though not the purest motive to virtue.
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What is earthly happiness? that phantom of which we hear so much, and see so little whose promises are constantly given and constantly broken, but as constantly believed that cheats us with the sound instead of the substance, and with the blossom instead of the fruit. Like Juno, she is a goddess in pursuit, but a cloud in possession.
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Those that know the least of others think the highest of themselves.
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Most importantly: Don't adjust your results to build up the ego of the chief strategist. Especially if the strategist is you.
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The avarice of the miser may be termed the grand sepulchral of all his other passions, as they successively decay.
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When we are in the company of sensible men, we ought to be doubly cautious of talking too much, lest we lose two good things, their good opinion and our own improvement for what we have to say we know, but what they have to say we know not.
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Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent for wealth, although it be a far less efficient source of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible.
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Of all the faculties of the mind, memory is the first that flourishes, and the first that dies.
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The learned languages are indispensable to form the gentleman and the scholar, and are well worth all the labor that they have cost us, provided they are valued not for themselves alone, which would make a pedant, but as a foundation for further acquirements.
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The cynic who twitted Aristippus by observing that the philosopher who could dine on herbs might despise the company of a king, was well replied to by Aristippus, when he remarked that the philosopher who could enjoy the company or a king might also despise a dinner of herbs.
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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.
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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.
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Happiness ... leads none of us by the same route.
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A wise minister would rather preserve peace than gain a victory, because he knows that even the most successful war leaves nations generally more poor, always more profligate, than it found them.
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