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We shall at all times chance upon men of recondite acquirements, but whose qualifications, from the incommunicative and inactive habits of their owners, are as utterly useless to others as though the possessors had them not.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Upon
Owners
Times
Habits
Others
Useless
Acquirements
Men
Habit
Recondite
Whose
Possessors
Shall
Inactive
Though
Qualifications
Chance
Utterly

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He that is good will infallibly become better, and he that is bad will as certainly become worse for vice, virtue, and time are three things that never stand still.
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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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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.
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Hope is a prodigal young heir, and Experience is his banker but his drafts are seldom honoured, since there is often a heavy balance against him, because he draws largely on a small capital, is not yet in possession, and if he were, would die.
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There are both dull correctness and piquant carelessness it is needless to say which will command the most readers and have the most influence.
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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.
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Time is the measurer of all things, but is itself immeasurable, and the grand discloser of all things, but is itself undisclosed.
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There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise.
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Men's arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.
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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.
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Wealth is a relative thing since those who have little and want less are richer than those who have much but want more.
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The learned languages are indispensable to form the gentleman and the scholar, and are well worth all the labor that they have cost us, provided they are valued not for themselves alone, which would make a pedant, but as a foundation for further acquirements.
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Insults are engendered from vulgar minds, like toadstools from a dunghill.
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It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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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The sun should not set upon our anger, neither should he rise upon our confidence. We should forgive freely, but forget rarely. I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy but I will remember, and this I owe to myself.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Neither can we admit that definition of genius that some would propose--a power to accomplish all that we undertake for we might multiply examples to prove that this definition of genius contains more than the thing defined. Cicero failed in poetry, Pope in painting, Addison in oratory yet it would be harsh to deny genius to these men.
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The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves.
Charles Caleb Colton
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He that knows himself, knows others and he that is ignorant of himself, could not write a very profound lecture on other men's heads.
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Logic and metaphysics make use of more tools than all the rest of the sciences put together, and do the least work.
Charles Caleb Colton