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Discretion has been termed the better part of valour, and it is more certain, that diffidence is the better part of knowledge.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Knowledge
Part
Certain
Better
Diffidence
Termed
Valour
Discretion

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Pedantry crams our heads with learned lumber and takes out our brains to make room for it.
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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.
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When a man has displayed talent in some particular path, and left all competitors behind him in it, the world are too apt to give him credit for universality of genius, and to anticipate for him success in all that he undertakes.
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Avarice begets more vices than Priam did children and like Priam survives them all. It starves its keeper to surfeit those who wish him dead, and makes him submit to more mortifications to lose heaven than the martyr undergoes to gain it.
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Mental pleasures never cloy unlike those of the body, they are increased by reputation, approved by reflection, and strengthened by enjoyment.
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So blinded are we by our passions, that we suffer more to be damned than to be saved.
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Contemporaries appreciate the person rather than their merit, posterity will regard the merit rather than the person.
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Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Light, whether it be material or moral, is the best reformer.
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Time is the most subtle yet the most insatiable of depredators, and by appearing to take nothing is permitted to take all nor can it be satisfied until it has stolen the world from us, and us from the world. It constantly flies, yet overcomes all things by flight and although it is the present ally, it will be the future conqueror of death.
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Our actions must clothe us with an immortality loathsome or glorious.
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In science, reason is the guide in poetry, taste. The object of the one is truth, which is uniform and indivisible the object of the other is beauty, which is multiform and varied.
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Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance.
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Peace is the evening star of the soul, as virtue is its sun, and the two are never far apart.
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The more gross the fraud the more glibly will it go down, and the more greedily be swallowed, since folly will always find faith where impostors will find imprudence.
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The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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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Shakespeare, Butler and Bacon have rendered it extremely difficult for all who come after them to be sublime, witty or profound.
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None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.
Charles Caleb Colton