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Villainy that is vigilant will be an overmatch for virtue, if she slumber at her post.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
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Writer
Charles Colton
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Virtue
Villainy
Slumber
Vigilant
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More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues.
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There are three modes of bearing the ills of life by indifference, which is the most common by philosophy, which is the most ostentatious and by religion, which is the most effectual.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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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Expect not praise without envy until you are dead.
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If a book really wants the patronage of a great name, it is a bad book and if it be a good book, it wants it not.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Power, like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer it dignifies meanness it magnifies littleness to what is contemptible, it gives authority to what is low, exaltation.
Charles Caleb Colton
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From the preponderance of talent, we may always infer the soundness and vigour of the commonwealth but from the preponderance of riches, its dotage and degeneration.
Charles Caleb Colton
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As the gout seems privileged to attack the bodies of the wealthy, so ennui seems to exert a similar prerogative over their minds.
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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Sturdy beggars can bear stout denials.
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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Secrecy is the soul of all great designs. Perhaps more has been effected by concealing our own intentions than by discovering those of our enemy.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The greatest and most amiable privilege which the rich enjoy over the poor is that which they exercise the least--the privilege of making others happy.
Charles Caleb Colton
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When the air balloon was first discovered, some one flippantly asked Dr. Franklin what was the use of it. The doctor answered this question by asking another: What is the use of a new-born infant? It may become a man.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Unity of opinion is indeed a glorious and desirable thing, and its circle cannot be too strong and extended, if the centre be truth but if the centre be error, the greater the circumference, the greater the evil.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Revenge is a much more punctual paymaster than gratitude
Charles Caleb Colton
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As there are none so weak that we may venture to injure them with impunity, so there are none so low that they may not at some time be able to repay an obligation. Therefore, what benevolence would dictate, prudence would confirm.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate the nearer we arrive unto it. For what do we truly know, or what can we clearly affirm, of any one of those important things upon which all our reasonings must of necessity be built--time and space, life and death, matter and mind?
Charles Caleb Colton