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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
Valour
Discretion
Knowledge
Part
Certain
Better
Diffidence
Termed

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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If you want enemies, excel others if you want friends, let others excel you.
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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Accustom yourself to submit on all and every occasion, and on the most minute, no less than on the most important circumstances of life, to a small present evil, to obtain a greater distant good. This will give decision, tone, and energy to the mind, which, thus disciplined, will often reap victory from defeat and honor from repulse.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It has been shrewdly said, that when, men abuse us we should suspect ourselves, and when they praise us, them. It is a rare instance of virtue to despise which censure which we do not deserve and still more rare to despise praise which we do.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Man is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Time, the cradle of hope, but the grave of ambition, is the stern corrector of fools, but the salutary counselor of the wise, bringing all they dread to the one, and all they desire to the other.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The poorest man would not part with health for money, but the richest would gladly part with all their money for health.
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 no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.
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Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Words indeed are but the signs and counters of knowledge, and their currency should be strictly regulated by the capital which they represent.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Repartee is perfect when it effects its purpose with a double edge. It is the highest order of wit, as it indicates the coolest yet quickest exercise of genius, at a moment when the passions are roused.
Charles Caleb Colton
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We may anticipate bliss, but who ever drank of that enchanted cup unalloved?
Charles Caleb Colton
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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
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Diffidence is the better part of knowledge.
Charles Caleb Colton
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None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.
Charles Caleb Colton
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No propagation or multiplication is more rapid that that of evil, unless it be checked no growth more certain.
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
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Sensibility would be a good portress if she had but one hand with her right she opens the door to pleasure, but with her left to pain.
Charles Caleb Colton
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I have somewhere seen it observed that we should make the same use of a book that the bee does of a flower: she steals sweets from it, but does not injure it.
Charles Caleb Colton