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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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The victim to too severe a law is considered as a martyr rather than a criminal.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is seldom that statesmen have the option of choosing between a good and an evil.
Charles Caleb Colton
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No men despise physic so much as physicians, because no men so thoroughly understand how little it can perform.
Charles Caleb Colton
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In death itself there can be nothing terrible, for the act of death annihilates sensation; but there are many roads to death, and some of them justly formidable, even to the bravest.
Charles Caleb Colton
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That alliance may be said to have a double tie, where the minds are united as well as the body; and the union will have all its strength when both the links are in perfection together.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Men of great and shining qualities do not always succeed in life, but the fault lies more often in themselves than in others.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Strong as our passions are, they may be starved into submission, and conquered without being killed.
Charles Caleb Colton
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There are circumstances of peculiar difficulty and danger, where a mediocrity of talent is the most fatal quantum that a man can possibly possess. Had Charles the First and Louis the Sixteenth been more wise or more weak, more firm or more yielding, in either case they had both of them saved their heads.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The man of pleasure, by a vain attempt to be more happy than any man can be, is often more miserable than most men are.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Of two evils, it is perhaps less injurious to society, that good doctrine should be accompanied by a bad life, than that a good life should lend its support to a bad doctrine.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat; and worldly wisdom dictates to her disciples the propriety of dressing somewhat beyond their means, but of living somewhat within them,--for every one, sees how we dress, but none see how we live, except we choose to let them. But the truly great are, by universal suffrage, exempted from these trammels, an may live or dress as they please.
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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If that marvellous microcosm, man, with all the costly cargo of his faculties and powers, were indeed a rich argosy, fitted out and freighted only for shipwreck and destruction, who amongst us that tolerate the present only from the hope of the future, who that have any aspirings of a high and intellectual nature about them, could be brought to submit to the disgusting mortifications of the voyage?
Charles Caleb Colton
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Those graces which from their presumed facility encourage all to attempt an imitation of them, are usually the most inimitable.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The science of mathematics performs more than it promises.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The temple of truth is built indeed of stones of crystal, but, inasmuch as men have been concerned in rearing it, it has been consolidated by a cement composed of baser materials.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Happiness is much more equally divided than some of us imagine. One man shall possess most of the materials, but little of the thing; another may possess much of the thing, but very few of the material. In this particular view of it, happiness had been beautifully compared to the man in the desert--he that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Gaming has been resorted to by the affluent as a refuge from ennui. It is a mental dram, and may succeed for a moment; but, like all other stimuli, it produces indirect debility.
Charles Caleb Colton
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We know the effects of many things, but the cause of few; experience, therefore, is a surer guide than imagination, and inquiry than conjecture.
Charles Caleb Colton
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A semi-civilized state of society, equally removed from the extremes of barbarity and of refinement, seems to be that particular meridian under which all the reciprocities and gratuities of hospitality do most readily flourish and abound. For it so happens that the ease, the luxury, and the abundance of the highest state of civilization, are as productive of selfishness, as the difficulties, the privations, and the sterilities of he lowest.
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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If our eloquence be directed above the heads of our hearers, we shall do no execution. By pointing our arguments low, we stand a chance of hitting their hearts as well as their heads. In addressing angels, we could hardly raise our eloquence too high; but we must remember that men are not angels.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The hand that unnerved Belshazzar derived its most horrifying influence from the want of a body, and death itself is not formidable in what we do know of it, but in what we do not.
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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Quote of the day
Yet would we die as some have done: Beating a way for the rising sun.
Arna Bontemps
Charles Caleb Colton
Born:
1780
Died:
1832
(aged 52)
Bio:
Charles Caleb Colton was an English cleric, writer and collector, well known for his eccentricities.
Known for:
Lacon (1820)
Modern Antiquity, and Other Poems
Most used words:
men
truth
time
happiness
mind
power
knowledge
find
life
love
write
body
ignorance
health
wise
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