“I question if Epicurus and Hume have done mankind a greater service by the looseness of their doctrines than by the purity of their lives. Of such men we may more justly exclaim, than of Caesar, "Confound their virtues, they've undone the world!”
Quote by Charles Caleb Colton
“In its primary signification, all vice, that is, all excess, brings on its own punishment, even here. By certain fixed, settled and established laws of Him who is the God of nature, excess of every kind destroys that constitution which temperance would preserve. The debauchee offers up his body a "living sacrifice to sin.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The greatest miracle that the Almighty could perform would be to make a bad man happy, even in heaven; he must unparadise that blessed place to accomplish it. In its primary signification, all vice--that is, all excess--brings its own punishment even here.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“It is a great piece of skill to know how to guide your luck even while waiting for it.”
Source: The Art of Worldly Wisdom
“Too high an appreciation of our own talents is the chief cause why experience preaches to us all in vain.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“That extremes beget extremes is an apothegm built on the most profound observation of the human mind.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Faith and works are necessary to our spiritual life as Christians, as soul and body are to our natural life as men; for faith is the soul of religion, and works the body.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“It is sufficiently humiliating to our nature to reflect that our knowledge is but as she rivulet, our ignorance as the sea. On points of the highest interest, the moment we quit the light of revelation we shall find that Platonism itself is intimately connected with Pyrrhonism, and the deepest inquiry with the darkest doubt.”
“Falsehood, like a drawing in perspective, will not bear to be examined in every point of view, because it is a good imitation of truth, as a perspective is of the reality, only in one. But truth, like that reality of which the perspective is the representation, will bear to be scrutinized in all points of view, and though examined under every situation, is one and the same.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“As there are some faults that have been termed faults on the right side, so there are some errors that might be denominated errors on the safe side. Thus we seldom regret having been too mild, too cautious, or too humble; but we often repent having been too violent, too precipitate, or too proud.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“There is this paradox in fear: he is most likely to inspire it in others who has none himself!”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
