Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

Image
In death itself there can be nothing terrible, for the act of death annihilates sensation but there are many roads to death, and some of them justly formidable, even to the bravest.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Of all the faculties of the mind, memory is the first that flourishes, and the first that dies.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate, the nearer we arrive unto it.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
That extremes beget extremes is an apothegm built on the most profound observation of the human mind.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
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
Image
The acquirements of science may be termed the armour of the mind but that armour would be worse than useless, that cost us all we had, and left us nothing to defend.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us - never cease to instruct - never cloy.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Women do not transgress the bounds of decorum so often as men but when they do, they go greater lengths.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
It is better to have wisdom without learning than learning without wisdom.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Hope is a prodigal young heir, and experience is his banker.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
There are both dull correctness and piquant carelessness it is needless to say which will command the most readers and have the most influence.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
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
Image
Riches may enable us to confer favors, but to confer them with propriety and grace requires a something that riches cannot give.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
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
Image
Any one can give advice, such as it is, but only a wise man knows how to profit by it.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
A hug is worth a thousand words.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
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
Image
Some men are very entertaining for a first interview, but after that they are exhausted, and run out on a second meeting we shall find them flat and monotonous like hand-organs, we have heard all their tunes.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
We ought not to be over-anxious to encourage innovation in cases of doubtful improvement, for an old system must ever have two advantages over a new one it is established, and it is understood.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
It was served of the Jesuits, that they constantly inculcated a thorough contempt of worldly things in their doctrines, but eagerly grasped at them in their lives. They were wise in their generation for they cried down worldly things because they wanted to obtain them, and cried up spiritual things, because they wanted to dispose of them.
Charles Caleb Colton