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It is always easy to shut a book, but not quite so easy to get rid of a lettered coxcomb.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Lettered
Coxcomb
Shut
Quite
Easy
Book
Always

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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Most plagiarists, like the drone, have neither taste to select, industry to acquire, nor skill to improve, but impudently pilfer the honey ready prepared, from the hive.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Reply to wit with gravity, and to gravity with wit.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Five thousand years have added no improvement to the hive of the bee, nor to the house of the beaver but look at the habitations and the achievements of men!
Charles Caleb Colton
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Where true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a pretext for a thousand.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Expect not praise without envy until you are dead.
Charles Caleb Colton
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As we ascend in society, like those who climb a mountain, we shall find that the line of perpetual congelation commences with the higher circles and the nearer we approach to the grand luminary the court, the more frigidity and apathy shall we experience.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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
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If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself all that runs over will be yours.
Charles Caleb Colton
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By privileges, immunities, or prerogatives to give unlimited swing to the passions of individuals, and then to hope that they will restrain them, is about as reasonable as to expect that the tiger will spare the hart to browse upon the herbage.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Men's arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.
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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Some persons will tell you, with an air of the miraculous, that they recovered although they were given over whereas they might with more reason have said, they recovered because they were given over.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Some men who know that they are great are so very haughty withal and insufferable that their acquaintance discover their greatness only by the tax of humility which they are obliged to pay as the price of their friendship.
Charles Caleb Colton
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When you have nothing to say, say nothing a weak defense strengthens your opponent, and silence is less injurious than a bad reply.
Charles Caleb Colton
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How strange it is that we of the present day are constantly praising that past age which our fathers abused, and as constantly abusing that present age, which our children will praise.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Men pursue riches under the idea that their possession will set them at ease, and above the world. But the law of association often makes those who begin by loving gold as a servant finish by becoming themselves its slaves and independence without wealth is at least as common as wealth without independence.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Some reputed saints that have been canonized ought to have been cannonaded.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Love is a volcano, the crater of which no wise man will approach too nearly, lest ... he should be swallowed up.
Charles Caleb Colton