Quote

The French have a saying that whatever excellence a man may exhibit in a public station he is very apt to be ridiculous in a private one.

Charles Caleb Colton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Private
Saying
Exhibit
Public
Exhibits
Whatever
Station
May
Stations
Men
French
Excellence
Ridiculous

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

Image
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
Image
Precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity as to those mysterious powers assumed by others.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
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
Image
Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
We are not more ingenious in searching out bad motives for good actions when performed by others, than good motives for bad actions when performed by ourselves.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Reply to wit with gravity, and to gravity with wit.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
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
Image
Of all the faculties of the mind, memory is the first that flourishes, and the first that dies.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Heroism, self-denial, and magnanimity, in all instances where they do not spring from a principle of religion, are but splendid altars on which we sacrifice one kind of self-love to another.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Constant success shows us but one side of the world adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Women do not transgress the bounds of decorum so often as men but when they do, they go greater lengths.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
We injure mysteries, which are matters of faith by any attempt at explanation in order to make them matters of reason.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
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
Image
Men pursue riches under the idea that their possession will set them at ease, and above the world. But the law of association often makes those who begin by loving gold as a servant finish by becoming themselves its slaves and independence without wealth is at least as common as wealth without independence.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
We hate some persons because we do not know them and will not know them because we hate them.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
All adverse and depressing influences can be overcome, not by fighting, by by rising above them.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Secrecy is the soul of all great designs. Perhaps more has been effected by concealing our own intentions than by discovering those of our enemy.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
It is astonishing how much more anxious people are to lengthen life than to improve it and as misers often lose large sums of money in attempting to make more, so do hypochondriacs squander large sums of time in search of nostrums by which they vainly hope they may get more time to squander.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
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