Quote

Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate the nearer we arrive unto it. For what do we truly know, or what can we clearly affirm, of any one of those important things upon which all our reasonings must of necessity be built--time and space, life and death, matter and mind?

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Humans
Built
Unto
Matter
Truly
Reasoning
Must
Knowledge
Necessity
Important
Space
Clearly
Reasonings
Mind
Lying
Deeper
Affirm
Things
Upon
Bottom
Nearer
Time
Death
Ignorance
Penetrate
Life
Human
Lies
Arrive

More quotes by 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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The learned languages are indispensable to form the gentleman and the scholar, and are well worth all the labor that they have cost us, provided they are valued not for themselves alone, which would make a pedant, but as a foundation for further acquirements.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Despotism can no more exist in a nation until the liberty of the press be destroyed than the night can happen before the sun is set.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance.
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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Mental pleasures never cloy unlike those of the body, they are increased by reputation, approved by reflection, and strengthened by enjoyment.
Charles Caleb Colton
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There can be no Christianity where there is no charity
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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There are three difficulties in authorship-to write any thing worth the publishing-to find honest men to publish it -and to get sensible men to read it. Literature has now become a game in which the Booksellers are the Kings The Critics the Knaves the Public, the Pack and the poor Author, the mere table, or the Thing played upon.
Charles Caleb Colton
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We strive as hard to hide our hearts from ourselves as from others, and always with more success for in deciding upon our own case we are both judge, jury, and executioner, and where sophistry cannot overcome the first, or flattery the second, self-love is always ready to defeat the sentence by bribing the third.
Charles Caleb Colton
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There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Those who have finished by making all others think with them, have usually been those who began by daring to think with themselves.
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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It has been shrewdly said, that when, men abuse us we should suspect ourselves, and when they praise us, them. It is a rare instance of virtue to despise which censure which we do not deserve and still more rare to despise praise which we do.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Truth can hardly be expected to adapt herself to the crooked policy and wily sinuosities of worldly affairs for truth, like light, travels only in straight lines.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is far more easy to acquire a fortune like a knave, than to expend it, like a gentleman.
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
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Persecuting bigots may be compared to those burning lenses which Lenhenboeck and others composed from ice by their chilling apathy they freeze the suppliant by their fiery zeal they burn the sufferer.
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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When millions applaud you seriously ask yourself what harm you have done and when they disapprove you, what good.
Charles Caleb Colton