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That theatrical kind of virtue, which requires publicity for its stage, and an applauding world for its audience, could not be depended on, in the secrecy of solitude, or the retirement of a desert.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Desert
Solitude
Requires
Applauding
Virtue
Depended
Stage
Theatrical
Audience
Secrecy
Kind
Publicity
World
Retirement

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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To dare to live alone is the rarest courage since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.
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War is a game in which princes seldom win, the people never.
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It is adverse to talent to be consorted and trained up with inferior minds and inferior companions, however high they may rank. The foal of the racer neither finds out his speed nor calls out his powers if pastured out with the common herd, that are destined for the collar and the yoke.
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It is astonishing how much more anxious people are to lengthen life than to improve it and as misers often lose large sums of money in attempting to make more, so do hypochondriacs squander large sums of time in search of nostrums by which they vainly hope they may get more time to squander.
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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In cases of doubtful morality, it is usual to say is there any harm in doing this? This question may sometimes be best answered by asking ourselves another is there any harm in letting it alone?
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Knavery is supple, and can bend, but honesty is firm and upright and yields not.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Genius in one grand particular is like life. We know nothing of either but by their effects.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Expect not praise without envy until you are dead.
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He who knows himself knows others.
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Happiness is that single and glorious thing which is the very light and sun of the whole animated universe and where she is not it were better that nothing should be.
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.
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The awkwardness and embarrassment which all feel on beginning to write, when they themselves are the theme, ought to serve as a hint to author's that self is a subject they ought very rarely to descant upon.
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That is true beauty which has not only a substance, but a spirit a beauty that we must intimately know, justly to appreciate.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Sturdy beggars can bear stout denials.
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Men of great and shining qualities do not always succeed in life, but the fault lies more often in themselves than in others.
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No two things differ more than hurry and despatch. Hurry is the mark of a weak mind despatch of a strong one.
Charles Caleb Colton
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They that are loudest in their threats are the weakest in the execution of them. It is probable that he who is killed by lightning hears no noise but the thunder-clap which follows, and which most alarms the ignorant, is the surest proof of their safety.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The French have a saying that whatever excellence a man may exhibit in a public station he is very apt to be ridiculous in a private one.
Charles Caleb Colton