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There is more jealousy between rival wits than rival beauties, for vanity has no sex. But in both cases there must be pretensions, or there will be no jealousy.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Cases
Wits
Must
Rival
Pretension
Rivals
Jealousy
Wit
Vanity
Pretensions
Sex
Beauties

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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Posthumous fame is a plant of tardy growth, for our body must be the seed of it or we may liken it to a torch, which nothing but the last spark of life can light up or we may compare it to the trumpet of the archangel, for it is blown over the dead but unlike that awful blast, it is of earth, not of heaven, and can neither rouse nor raise us.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is a mortifying truth, and ought to teach the wisest of us humility, that many of the most valuable discoveries have been the result of chance rather than of contemplation, and of accident rather than of design.
Charles Caleb Colton
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No company is preferable to bad. We are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The worst thing that can be said of the most powerful is that they can take your life but the same can be said of the most weak.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Observation made in the cloister or in the desert will generally be as obscure as the one and as barren as the other but he that would paint with his pencil must study originals, and not be over-fearful of a little dust.
Charles Caleb Colton
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For one man who sincerely pities our misfortunes, there are a thousand who sincerely hate our success.
Charles Caleb Colton
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We ought not to be over-anxious to encourage innovation in cases of doubtful improvement, for an old system must ever have two advantages over a new one it is established, and it is understood.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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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It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat.
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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To look back to antiquity is one thing, to go back to it is another.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Jealousy is sustained as often by pride as by affection.
Charles Caleb Colton
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There are three kinds of praise, that which we yield, that which we lend, and that which we pay. We yield it to the powerful from fear, we lend it to the weak from interest, and we pay it to the deserving from gratitude.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves.
Charles Caleb Colton
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From the preponderance of talent, we may always infer the soundness and vigour of the commonwealth but from the preponderance of riches, its dotage and degeneration.
Charles Caleb Colton
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I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy but I will remember, and this I owe to myself.
Charles Caleb Colton
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If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself all that runs over will be yours.
Charles Caleb Colton
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We are ruined, not by what we really want, but by what we think we do therefore never go abroad in search of your wants if they be real wants, they will come home in search of you for he that buys what he does not want, will soon want what he cannot buy.
Charles Caleb Colton
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What is earthly happiness? that phantom of which we hear so much, and see so little whose promises are constantly given and constantly broken, but as constantly believed that cheats us with the sound instead of the substance, and with the blossom instead of the fruit. Like Juno, she is a goddess in pursuit, but a cloud in possession.
Charles Caleb Colton
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He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place.
Charles Caleb Colton