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It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Habit
Almost
Knowledge
Difficult
Make
Men
Unlearn
Errors

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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There are two things which ought to teach us to think but meanly of human glory the very best have had their calumniators, the very worst their panegyrists.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The mob is a monster, with the hands of Briareus, but the head of Polyphemus,--strong to execute, but blind to perceive.
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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Fame is an undertaker that pays but little attention to the living, but bedizens the dead, furnishes out their funerals, and follows them to the grave
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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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.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The inheritance of a distinguished and noble name is a proud inheritance to him who lives worthily of it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Nobility of birth does not always insure a corresponding unity of mind if it did, it would always act as a stimulus to noble actions but it sometimes acts as a clog rather than a spur.
Charles Caleb Colton
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If it be true that men of strong imaginations are usually dogmatists--and I am inclined to think it is so--it ought to follow that men of weak imaginations are the reverse in which case we should have some compensation for stupidity. But it unfortunately happens that no dogmatist is more obstinate or less open to conviction than a fool.
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
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No improvement that takes place in either sex can possibly be confined to itself. Each is a universal mirror to each, and the respective refinement of the one will always be in reciprocal proportion to the polish of the other.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is sufficiently humiliating to our nature to reflect that our knowledge is but as she rivulet, our ignorance as the sea. On points of the highest interest, the moment we quit the light of revelation we shall find that Platonism itself is intimately connected with Pyrrhonism, and the deepest inquiry with the darkest doubt.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Great minds had rather deserve contemporaneous applause without obtaining it, than obtain without deserving it. If it follow them it is well, but they will not deviate to follow it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow but the misfortune is that in this particular case, the substance belongs to the shadow, the emptiness to its cause.
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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A wise minister would rather preserve peace than gain a victory, because he knows that even the most successful war leaves nations generally more poor, always more profligate, than it found them.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility.
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