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Quotes by Charles Caleb Colton


True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.
– Charles Caleb Colton
A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Avarice has ruined more souls than extravagance.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.
– Charles Caleb Colton
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.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Constant success shows us but one side of the world; adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Contemporaries appreciate the person rather than their merit, posterity will regard the merit rather than the person.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and hell a fable.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship - never.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Friendship, of itself a holy tie,Is made more sacred by adversity.
– Charles Caleb Colton
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.
– Charles Caleb Colton
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
He that is good, will infallibly become better, and he that is bad, will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue and time are three things that never stand still.
– Charles Caleb Colton
He that knows himself, knows others; and he that is ignorant of himself, could not write a very profound lecture on other men's heads.
– Charles Caleb Colton
He who studies books alone will know how things ought to be, and he who studies men will know how they are.
– Charles Caleb Colton
I'm aiming by the time I'm fifty to stop being an adolescent.
– Charles Caleb Colton
If a horse has four legs, and I'm riding it, I think I can win.
– Charles Caleb Colton
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
In life we shall find many men that are great, and some that are good, but very few men that are both great and good.
– Charles Caleb Colton
It is always safe to learn, even from our enemies; seldom safe to venture to instruct, even our friends.
– Charles Caleb Colton
It is better to meet danger than to wait for it. He that is on a lee shore, and foresees a hurricane, stands out to sea and encounters a storm to avoid a shipwreck.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Justice to my readers compels me to admit that I write because I have nothing to do; justice to myself induces me to add that I will cease to write the moment I have nothing to say.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Knowledge is two-fold, and consists not only in an affirmation of what is true, but in the negation of that which is false.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Law and equity are two things which God has joined, but which man has put asunder.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Life isn't like a book. Life isn't logical or sensible or orderly. Life is a mess most of the time. And theology must be lived in the midst of that mess.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Love is an alliance of friendship and animalism; if the former predominates it is passion exalted and refined; if the latter, gross and sensual.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Many speak the truth when they say that they despise riches, but they mean the riches possessed by others.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but live for it.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.
– Charles Caleb Colton
None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Nothing so completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straightforward and simple integrity in another.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Of present fame think little, and of future less; the praises that we receive after we are buried, like the flowers that are strewed over our grave, may be gratifying to the living, but they are nothing to the dead.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Our income are like our shoes; if too small, they gall and pinch us; but if too large, they cause us to stumble and trip.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Patience is the support of weakness; impatience the ruin of strength.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness when bequeathed by those who, even alive, would part with nothing.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish.
– Charles Caleb Colton
The consequences of things are not always proportionate to the apparent magnitude of those events that have produced them. Thus the American Revolution, from which little was expected, produced much; but the French Revolution, from which much was expected, produced little.
– Charles Caleb Colton
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.
– Charles Caleb Colton
The excess of our youth are checks written against our age and they are payable with interest thirty years later.
– Charles Caleb Colton
The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.
– Charles Caleb Colton
The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world.
– Charles Caleb Colton
The present time has one advantage over every other - it is our own.
– Charles Caleb Colton
The society of dead authors has this advantage over that of the living: they never flatter us to our faces, nor slander us behind our backs, nor intrude upon our privacy, nor quit their shelves until we take them down.
– Charles Caleb Colton
The two most precious things this side of the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other.
– Charles Caleb Colton
There are three modes of bearing the ills of life, by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion.
– Charles Caleb Colton
There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.
– Charles Caleb Colton
There is this difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man, really is so; but he that thinks himself the wisest, is generally the greatest fool.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in their actions.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Those who visit foreign nations, but associate only with their own country-men, change their climate, but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with traveled bodies, but untravelled minds.
– Charles Caleb Colton
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
To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.
– Charles Caleb Colton
To write what is worth publishing, to find honest people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it, are the three great difficulties in being an author.
– Charles Caleb Colton
True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.
– Charles Caleb Colton
We ask advice, but we mean approbation.
– Charles Caleb Colton
We believe that the applause of silence is the only kind that counts.
– Charles Caleb Colton
We often pretend to fear what we really despise, and more often despise what we really fear.
– Charles Caleb Colton
We own almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed.
– Charles Caleb Colton
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.
– Charles Caleb Colton
When millions applaud you seriously ask yourself what harm you have done; and when they disapprove you, what good.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Deliberate with caution, but act with decision; and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.
– Charles Caleb Colton
If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; If you would know, and not be known, live in a city.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Men are born with two eyes, but only one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.
– Charles Caleb Colton
There are two modes of establishing our reputation: to be praised by honest men, and to be abused by rogues. It is best, however, to secure the former, because it will invariably be accompanied by the latter.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Times of general calamity and confusion create great minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace, and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storms.
– Charles Caleb Colton
To know a man, observe how he wins his object, rather than how he loses it; for when we fail our pride supports us; when we succeed, it betrays us.
– Charles Caleb Colton
We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them.
– Charles Caleb Colton
We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer tasting them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.
– Charles Caleb Colton
When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
– Charles Caleb Colton
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.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Riches may enable us to confer favours, but to confer them with propriety and grace requires a something that riches cannot give.
– Charles Caleb Colton
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.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.
– Charles Caleb Colton
War kills men, and men deplore the loss but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies.
– Charles Caleb Colton
The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility.
– Charles Caleb Colton
That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.
– Charles Caleb Colton
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
Physical courage, which despises all danger, will make a man brave in one way and moral courage, which despises all opinion, will make a man brave in another.
– Charles Caleb Colton
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
Men's arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.
– Charles Caleb Colton
In religion as in politics it so happens that we have less charity for those who believe half our creed, than for those who deny the whole of it.
– Charles Caleb Colton
Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.
– Charles Caleb Colton