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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

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Seen
Injure
Use
Steals
Observed
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Bees
Book
Stealing
Make
Somewhere
Flower
Sweet
Sweets

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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The code of poor laws has at length grown up into a tree, which, like the fabulous Upas, overshadows and poisons the land unwholesome expedients were the bud, dilemmas and depravities have been the blossom, and danger and despair are the bitter fruit.
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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Literature has her quacks no less than medicine, and they are divided into two classes those who have erudition without genius, and those who have volubility without depth we shall get second-hand sense from the one, and original nonsense from the other.
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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Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.
Charles Caleb Colton
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For one man who sincerely pities our misfortunes, there are a thousand who sincerely hate our success.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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
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Knavery is supple, and can bend, but honesty is firm and upright and yields not.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Envy is the coward side of Hate, And all her ways are bleak and desolate.
Charles Caleb Colton
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There are three difficulties in authorship-to write any thing worth the publishing-to find honest men to publish it -and to get sensible men to read it. Literature has now become a game in which the Booksellers are the Kings The Critics the Knaves the Public, the Pack and the poor Author, the mere table, or the Thing played upon.
Charles Caleb Colton
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He that studies books alone, will know how things ought to be and he that studies men, will know how things are.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Too high an appreciation of our own talents is the chief cause why experience preaches to us all in vain.
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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Those who visit foreign nations, but who associate only with their own countrymen, change their climate, but not their customs 'caelum non animum mutant': they see new meridians, but the same men, and with heads as empty as their pockets.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The sceptic, when he plunges into the depths of infidelity, like the miser who leaps from the shipwreck, will find that the treasures which he bears about him will only sink him deeper in the abyss.
Charles Caleb Colton
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If you are under obligations to many, it is prudent to postpone the recompensing of one, until it be in your power to remunerate all otherwise you will make more enemies by what you give, than by what you withhold.
Charles Caleb Colton
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When certain persons abuse us, let us ask ourselves what description of characters it is that they admire we shall often find this a very consolatory question.
Charles Caleb Colton
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You cannot separate charity and religion.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Perfection doesn't exist... only good attempts.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Love is an alliance of friendship and animalism if the former predominates it is passion exalted and refined if the latter, gross and sensual.
Charles Caleb Colton