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Power, like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer it dignifies meanness it magnifies littleness to what is contemptible, it gives authority to what is low, exaltation.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Gives
Contemptible
Also
Dazzle
Power
Exaltation
Giving
Beholder
Dignifies
Like
Meanness
Dazzles
Diamond
Wearer
Lows
Magnifies
Authority
Littleness

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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The masses procure their opinions ready made in open market.
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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.
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If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.
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Philosophy is a goddess, whose head indeed is in heaven, but whose feet are upon earth she attempts more than she accomplishes, and promises more than she performs.
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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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The head of dullness, unlike the tail of the torpedo, loses nothing of the benumbing and lethargizing influence by reiterated discharges.
Charles Caleb Colton
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When the air balloon was first discovered, some one flippantly asked Dr. Franklin what was the use of it. The doctor answered this question by asking another: What is the use of a new-born infant? It may become a man.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Like the rainbow, peace rests upon the earth, but its arch is lost in heaven. Heaven bathes it in hues of light--it springs up amid tears and clouds--it is a reflection of the eternal sun--it is an assurance of calm--it is the sign of a great covenant between God and man--it is an emanation from the distant orb of immortal light.
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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Of all the faculties of the mind, memory is the first that flourishes, and the first that dies.
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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Time,- that black and narrow isthmus between two eternities.
Charles Caleb Colton
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If kings would only determine not to extend their dominions until they had filled them with happiness, they would find the smallest territories too large, but the longest life too short for the full accomplishment of so grand and so noble an ambition.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is an easy and vulgar thing to please the mob, and no very arduous task to astonish them.
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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Fortune has been considered the guardian divinity of fools and, on this score, she has been accused of blindness but it should rather be adduced as a proof of her sagacity, when she helps those who cannot help themselves.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is curious that we pay statesmen for what they say, not for what they do and judge of them from what they do, not from what they say. Hence they have one code of maxims for profession and another for practice, and make up their consciences as the Neapolitans do their beds, with one set of furniture for show and another for use.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The good opinion of our fellow men is the strongest, though not the purest motive to virtue.
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