Charles Caleb Colton Quotes
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When millions applaud you seriously ask yourself what harm you have done; and when they disapprove you, what good.
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Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in their actions.
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Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.
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We ask advice, but we mean approbation.
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Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us - never cease to instruct - never cloy.
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With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid, than which to choose; for good books are as scarce as good companions.
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We own almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed.
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Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores.
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Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.
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The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end.
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True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.
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There are two way of establishing a reputation, one to be praised by honest people and the other to be accused by rogues. It is best, however, to secure the first one, because it will always be accompanied by the latter.
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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.
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Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.
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Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.
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Pedantry prides herself on being wrong by rules; while common sense is contented to be right, without them.
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Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route.
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If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.
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The present time has one advantage over every other - it is our own.
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To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it; the pains of power are real, its pleasures imaginary.
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If we can advance any propositions that are both true and new, these are indisputably our own, by right of discovery; and if we can repeat what is old more briefly and brightly than others, this also becomes our own, by right of conquest.
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Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
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There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.
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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.