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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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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Complaining
Office
Friends
Coffin
Happens
Coffins
Thing
Purchase
Kind
Performed
Never
Complain
Funeral

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
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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As there are none so weak that we may venture to injure them with impunity, so there are none so low that they may not at some time be able to repay an obligation. Therefore, what benevolence would dictate, prudence would confirm.
Charles Caleb Colton
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War kills men, and men deplore the loss but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Unity of opinion is indeed a glorious and desirable thing, and its circle cannot be too strong and extended, if the centre be truth but if the centre be error, the greater the circumference, the greater the evil.
Charles Caleb Colton
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We should not be too niggardly in our praise, for men will do more to support a character than to raise one.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate, the nearer we arrive unto it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Theory is worth but little, unless it can explain its own phenomena, and it must effect this without contradicting itself therefore, the facts are sometimes assimilated to the theory, rather than the theory to the facts.
Charles Caleb Colton
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By paying our other debts, we are equal with all mankind but in refusing to pay a debt of revenge, we are superior.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Contemporaries appreciate the person rather than their merit, posterity will regard the merit rather than the person.
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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A public debt is a kind of anchor in the storm but if the anchor be too heavy for the vessel, she will be sunk by that very weight which was intended for her preservation.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Taking things not as they ought to be, but as they are, I fear it must be allowed that Macchiavelli will always have more disciples than Jesus.
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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Pedantry prides herself on being wrong by rules while common sense is contented to be right without them.
Charles Caleb Colton
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In the pursuit of knowledge, follow it wherever it is to be found like fern, it is the produce of all climates, and like coin, its circulation is not restricted to any particular class.
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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Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and hell a fable.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Few things are more agreeable to self-love than revenge, and yet no cause so effectually restrains us from revenge as self-love. And this paradox naturally suggests another that the strength of the community is not unfrequently built upon the weakness of those individuals that compose it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Style is indeed the valet of genius, and an able one too but as the true gentleman will appear, even in rags, so true genius will shine, even through the coarsest style.
Charles Caleb Colton