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He that aspires to be the head of a party will find it more difficult to please his friends than to perplex his foes. He must often act from false reasons which are weak, because he dares not avow the true reasons which are strong.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Reason
Please
Foes
Find
Head
Dares
Must
Party
Foe
Friends
Aspire
Difficult
False
Often
Dare
Perplex
Strong
Reasons
Avow
True
Weak
Aspires

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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We must be careful how we flatter fools too little, or wise men too much, for the flatterer must act the very reverse of the physician, and administer the strongest dose only to the weakest patient.
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A leveller has long ago been set down as a ridiculous and chimerical being, who, if he could finish his work to-day, would have to begin it again tomorrow.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Literature has her quacks no less than medicine, and they are divided into two classes those who have erudition without genius, and those who have volubility without depth we shall get second-hand sense from the one, and original nonsense from the other.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The man of pleasure, by a vain attempt to be more happy than any man can be, is often more miserable than most men are.
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 is this difference between the two temporal blessings - health and money money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied and this superiority of the latter is still more obvious when we reflec.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Style is indeed the valet of genius, and an able one too but as the true gentleman will appear, even in rags, so true genius will shine, even through the coarsest style.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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.
Charles Caleb Colton
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My lowest days as a Christian have been more fulfilling and rewarding than all the days of glory in the White House.
Charles Caleb Colton
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All adverse and depressing influences can be overcome, not by fighting, by by rising above them.
Charles Caleb Colton
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A power above all human responsibility ought to be above all human attainment.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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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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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Avarice has ruined more men than prodigality, and the blindest thoughtlessness of expenditure has not destroyed so many fortunes as the calculating but insatiable lust of accumulation.
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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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.
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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Perfection doesn't exist... only good attempts.
Charles Caleb Colton
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If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village if you would know, and not be known, live in a city.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Man is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions.
Charles Caleb Colton