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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.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Correctness
Readers
Dull
Command
Reader
Piquant
Influence
Needless
Authorship
Carelessness

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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The only kind office performed for us by our friends of which we never complain is our funeral and the only thing which we most want, happens to be the only thing we never purchase--our coffin.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Novels may teach us as wholesome a moral as the pulpit. There are sermons in stones, in healthy books, and good in everything.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Despotism can no more exist in a nation until the liberty of the press be destroyed than the night can happen before the sun is set.
Charles Caleb Colton
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As that gallant can best affect a pretended passion for one woman who has no true love for another, so he that has no real esteem for any of the virtues can best assume the appearance of them all.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and hell a fable.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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.
Charles Caleb Colton
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To be continually subject to the breath of slander, will tarnish the purest virtue, as a constant exposure to the atmosphere will obscure the brightness of the finest gold but in either case, the real value of both continues the same, although the currency may be somewhat impeded.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The seeds of repentance are sown in youth by pleasure, but the harvest is reaped in age by pain.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Make no enemies he is insignificant indeed that can do thee no harm.
Charles Caleb Colton
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We devote the activity of our youth to revelry and the decrepitude of our old age to repentance: and we finish the farce by bequeathing our dead bodies to the chancel, which when living, we interdicted from the church.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Doubt is the vestibule of faith.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Expect not praise without envy until you are dead.
Charles Caleb Colton
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A house may draw visitors, but it is the possessor alone that can detain them.
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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Speaking generally, no man appears great to his contemporaries, for the same reason that no man is great to his servants--both know too much of him.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is a common observation that any fool can get money but they are not wise that think so.
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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As the gout seems privileged to attack the bodies of the wealthy, so ennui seems to exert a similar prerogative over their minds.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Be very slow to believe that you are wiser than all others it is a fatal but common error. Where one has been saved by a true estimation of another's weakness, thousands have been destroyed by a false appreciation of their own strength.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity as to those mysterious powers assumed by others.
Charles Caleb Colton