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Neither can we admit that definition of genius that some would propose--a power to accomplish all that we undertake for we might multiply examples to prove that this definition of genius contains more than the thing defined. Cicero failed in poetry, Pope in painting, Addison in oratory yet it would be harsh to deny genius to these men.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
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Charles Colton
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More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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Drunkenness is the vice of a good constitution or of a bad memory of a constitution so treacherously good that it never bends till it breaks or of a memory that recollects the pleasures of getting intoxicated, but forgets the pains of getting sober.
Charles Caleb Colton
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To dare to live alone is the rarest courage since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.
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
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The masses procure their opinions ready made in open market.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Some indeed there are who profess to despise all flattery, but even these are nevertheless to be flattered, by being told that they do despise it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Some philosophers would give a sex to revenge, and appropriate it almost exclusively to the female mind. But, like most other vices, it is of both genders yet, because wounded vanity and slighted love are the two most powerful excitements to revenge, it has been thought, perhaps, to rage with more violence in the female heart.
Charles Caleb Colton
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To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Happiness is that single and glorious thing which is the very light and sun of the whole animated universe and where she is not it were better that nothing should be.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Honesty is not only the deepest policy, but the highest wisdom since, however difficult it may be for integrity to get on, it is a thousand times more difficult for knavery to get off and no error is more fatal than that of those who think that Virtue has no other reward because they have heard that she is her own.
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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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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The avarice of the miser may be termed the grand sepulchral of all his other passions, as they successively decay.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Peace is the evening star of the soul, as virtue is its sun, and the two are never far apart.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Antithesis may be the blossom of wit, but it will never arrive at maturity unless sound sense be the trunk and truth the root.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is a common observation that any fool can get money but they are not wise that think so.
Charles Caleb Colton
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He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice should go a little further, and try to plant a virtue in its place otherwise he will have his labor to renew. A strong soil that has produced weeds may be made to produce wheat with far less difficulty than it would cost to make it produce nothing.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Whenever we find ourselves more inclined to persecute than to persuade, we may then be certain that our zeal has more of pride in it than of charity.
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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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