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The mob is a monster, with the hands of Briareus, but the head of Polyphemus,--strong to execute, but blind to perceive.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Hands
Polyphemus
Execute
Monster
Monsters
Perceive
Blind
Head
Strong

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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Of all the faculties of the mind, memory is the first that flourishes, and the first that dies.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The sceptic, when he plunges into the depths of infidelity, like the miser who leaps from the shipwreck, will find that the treasures which he bears about him will only sink him deeper in the abyss.
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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Most men know what they hate, few what they love.
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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The enthusiast has been compared to a man walking in a fog everything immediately around him, or in contact with him, appears sufficiently clear and luminous but beyond the little circle of which he himself is the centre, all is mist and error and confusion.
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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Instead of exhibiting talent in the hope that the world would forgive their eccentricities, they have exhibited only their eccentricities, in the hope that the world would give them credit for talent.
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.
Charles Caleb Colton
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In all places, and in all times, those religionists who have believed too much have been more inclined to violence and persecution than those who have believed too little.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The seat of perfect contentment is in the head for every individual is thoroughly satisfied with his own proportion of brains.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Nobility of birth does not always insure a corresponding unity of mind if it did, it would always act as a stimulus to noble actions but it sometimes acts as a clog rather than a spur.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Revenge is a debt, in the paying of which the greatest knave is honest and sincere, and, so far as he is able, punctual.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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.
Charles Caleb Colton
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None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.
Charles Caleb Colton
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He that knows himself, knows others and he that is ignorant of himself, could not write a very profound lecture on other men's heads.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The gamester, if he die a martyr to his profession, is doubly ruined. He adds his soul to every other loss, and by the act of suicide, renounces earth to forfeit Heaven.
Charles Caleb Colton
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There are two things which ought to teach us to think but meanly of human glory the very best have had their calumniators, the very worst their panegyrists.
Charles Caleb Colton
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For one man who sincerely pities our misfortunes, there are a thousand who sincerely hate our success.
Charles Caleb Colton
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He that will often put eternity and the world before him, and who will dare to look steadfastly at both of them, will find that the more often he contemplates them, the former will grow greater, and the latter less.
Charles Caleb Colton