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Drunkenness is the vice of a good constitution or of a bad memory of a constitution so treacherously good that it never bends till it breaks; or of a memory that recollects the pleasures of getting intoxicated, but forgets the pains of getting sober. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Tomorrow! It is a period nowhere to be found in all the registers of time, unless, perchance, in the fool's calendar. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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
In most quarrels there is a fault on both sides. A quarrel may be compared to a spark, which cannot be produced without a flint, as well as steel. Either of them may hammer on wood forever; no fire will follow. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Five thousand years have added no improvement to the hive of the bee, nor to the house of the beaver; but look at the habitations and the achievements of men! -- 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
We make a goddess of Fortune ... and place her in the highest heaven. But it is not fortune that is exalted and powerful, but we ourselves that are abject and weak. -- Charles Caleb Colton
All preceptors should have that kind of genius described by Tacitus, "equal to their business, but not above it;" a patient industry, with competent erudition; a mind depending more on its correctness than its originality, and on its memory rather than on its invention. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The sun should not set upon our anger, neither should he rise upon our confidence. We should forgive freely, but forget rarely. 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
There are two things that bestow consequence; great possession, or great debts. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The family is the most basic unit of government. As the first community to which a person is attached and the first authority under which a person learns to live, the family establishes society's most basic values. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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. -- Charles Caleb Colton
No propagation or multiplication is more rapid that that of evil, unless it be checked; no growth more certain. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The code of poor laws has at length grown up into a tree, which, like the fabulous Upas, overshadows and poisons the land; unwholesome expedients were the bud, dilemmas and depravities have been the blossom, and danger and despair are the bitter fruit. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The most zealous converters are always the most rancorous when they fail of producing conversion. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Custom looks to things that are past, and fashion to things that are present, but both of them are somewhat purblind as to things that are to come. -- Charles Caleb Colton
As we ascend in society, like those who climb a mountain, we shall find that the line of perpetual congelation commences with the higher circles; and the nearer we approach to the grand luminary the court, the more frigidity and apathy shall we experience. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Heaven may have happiness as utterly unknown to us as the gift of perfect vision would be to a man born blind. If we consider the inlets of pleasure from five senses only, we may be sure that the same Being who created us could have given us five hundred, if He had pleased. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Envy is the coward side of Hate, And all her ways are bleak and desolate. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Sensibility would be a good portress if she had but one hand; with her right she opens the door to pleasure, but with her left to pain. -- Charles Caleb Colton
He that aspires to be the head of a party will find it more difficult to please his friends than to perplex his foes. He must often act from false reasons which are weak, because he dares not avow the true reasons which are strong. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Evils in the journey of life are like the hills which alarm travelers upon their road; they both appear great at a distance, but when we approach them we find that they are far less insurmountable than we had conceived. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Avarice has ruined more souls than extravagance. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Pity a thing often avowed, seldom felt; hatred is a thing often felt, seldom avowed. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Love is a volcano, the crater of which no wise man will approach too nearly, lest ... he should be swallowed up. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Vice has more martyrs than virtue; and it often happens that men suffer more to be lost than to be saved. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Envy ought to have no place allowed it in the hearts of people; for the goods of this present world are so vile and low that they are beneath it; and those of the future world are so vast and exalted that they are above it. -- 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
Time, the cradle of hope ... Wisdom walks before it, opportunity with it, and repentance behind it: he that has made it his friend will have little to fear from his enemies, but he that has made it his enemy will have little to hope from his friends. -- Charles Caleb Colton
If kings would only determine not to extend their dominions until they had filled them with happiness, they would find the smallest territories too large, but the longest life too short for the full accomplishment of so grand and so noble an ambition. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Our very best friends have a tincture of jealousy even in their friendship; and when they hear us praised by others, will ascribe it to sinister and interested motives if they can. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Few things are more agreeable to self-love than revenge, and yet no cause so effectually restrains us from revenge as self-love. And this paradox naturally suggests another; that the strength of the community is not unfrequently built upon the weakness of those individuals that compose it. -- 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
Some men are very entertaining for a first interview, but after that they are exhausted, and run out; on a second meeting we shall find them flat and monotonous; like hand-organs, we have heard all their tunes. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Early rising not only gives us more life in the same number of years, but adds, likewise, to their number; and not only enables us to enjoy more of existence in the same time, but increases also the measure. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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
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
Of all the marvelous works of God, perhaps the one angels view with the most supreme astonishment, is a proud man. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The most notorious swindler has not assumed so many names as self-love, nor is so much ashamed of his own. She calls herself patriotism, when at the same time she is rejoicing at just as much calamity to her native country as will introduce herself into power, and expel her rivals. -- 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
Self-denial is often the sacrifice of one sort of self-love for another. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The only kind office performed for us by our friends of which we never complain is our funeral; and the only thing which we most want, happens to be the only thing we never purchase
our coffin. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The awkwardness and embarrassment which all feel on beginning to write, when they themselves are the theme, ought to serve as a hint to author's that self is a subject they ought very rarely to descant upon. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge. -- Charles Caleb Colton
He that sympathizes in all the happiness of others, perhaps himself enjoys the safest happiness. -- 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
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
Villainy that is vigilant will be an overmatch for virtue, if she slumber at her post. -- Charles Caleb Colton
If we trace the history of most revolutions, we shall find that the first inroads upon the laws have been made by the governors, as often as by the governed. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Fashion is the veriest goddess of semblance and of shade; to be happy is of far less consequence to her worshippers than to appear so; even pleasure itself they sacrifice to parade, and enjoyment to ostentation. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Flattery is often a traffic of mutual meanness, where although both parties intend deception, neither are deceived. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Sleep, the type of death, is also, like that which it typifies, restricted to the earth. It flies from hell and is excluded from heaven. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The gamester, if he die a martyr to his profession, is doubly ruined. He adds his soul to every other loss, and by the act of suicide, renounces earth to forfeit Heaven. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The praise of the envious is far less creditable than their censure; they praise only that which they can surpass, but that which surpasses them they censure. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It was observed of Elizabeth that she was weak herself, but chose wise counsellors; to which it was replied, that to choose wise counsellors was, in a prince, the highest wisdom. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Criticism is like champagne, nothing more execrable if bad, nothing more excellent if good; if meagre, muddy, vapid and sour, both are fit only to engender colic and wind; but if rich, generous and sparkling, they communicate a genial glow to the spirits, improve the taste, and expand the heart. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The martyrs to vice far exceed the martyrs to virtue, both in endurance and in number. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The moral cement of all society is virtue; it unites and preserves, while vice separates and destroys. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Friendship often ends in love. But love in friendship; never. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Our actions must clothe us with an immortality loathsome or glorious. -- Charles Caleb Colton
So long as lust, whether of the world or flesh, smells sweet in our nostrils, so long we are loathsome to God. -- 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
To be continually subject to the breath of slander, will tarnish the purest virtue, as a constant exposure to the atmosphere will obscure the brightness of the finest gold; but in either case, the real value of both continues the same, although the currency may be somewhat impeded. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Nothing is more durable than the dynasty of Doubt; for he reigns in the hearts of all his people, but gives satisfaction to none of them, and yet he is the only despot who can never die, while any of his subjects live. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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
There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Happiness ... leads none of us by the same route. -- 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
That an author's work is the mirror of his mind is a position that has led to very false conclusions. If Satan himself were to write a book it would be in praise of virtue, because the good would purchase it for use, and the bad for ostentation. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Success seems to be that which forms the distinction between confidence and conceit. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The avarice of the miser may be termed the grand sepulchral of all his other passions, as they successively decay. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Some men who know that they are great are so very haughty withal and insufferable that their acquaintance discover their greatness only by the tax of humility which they are obliged to pay as the price of their friendship. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Speaking generally, no man appears great to his contemporaries, for the same reason that no man is great to his servants
both know too much of him. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Death is the only sovereign whom no partiality can warp, and no price corrupt. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There is this of good in real evils; they deliver us, while they last, from the petty despotism of all that were imaginary. -- Charles Caleb Colton
A youth without fire is followed by an old age without experience. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It has been shrewdly said, that when, men abuse us we should suspect ourselves, and when they praise us, them. It is a rare instance of virtue to despise which censure which we do not deserve; and still more rare to despise praise which we do. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Those that know the least of others think the highest of themselves. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Falsehood is never so successful as when she baits her hook with truth, and no opinions so fatally mislead us as those that are not wholly wrong, as no watches so effectively deceive the wearer as those that are sometimes right. -- 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
No disorders have employed so many quacks, as those that have no cure; and no sciences have exercised so many quills, as those that have no certainty. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice makes concerning wealth. She begins by accumulating power as a means to happiness, and she finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Public charities and benevolent associations for the gratuitous relief of every species of distress, are peculiar to Christianity; no other system of civil or religious policy has originated them; they form its highest praise and characteristic feature. -- Charles Caleb Colton
They that are loudest in their threats are the weakest in the execution of them. It is probable that he who is killed by lightning hears no noise; but the thunder-clap which follows, and which most alarms the ignorant, is the surest proof of their safety. -- Charles Caleb Colton
When certain persons abuse us, let us ask ourselves what description of characters it is that they admire; we shall often find this a very consolatory question. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Villains are usually the worst casuists, and rush into crimes to avoid less. Henry VIII. committed murder to avoid the imputation of adultery; and in our times, those who commit the latter crime attempt to wash off the stain of seducing the wife by signifying their readiness to shoot the husband. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Pure truth, like pure gold, has been found unfit for circulation because men have discovered that it is far more convenient to adulterate the truth than to refine themselves. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Love, like the cold bath, is never negative, it seldom leaves us where it finds us; if once we plunge into it, it will either heighten our virtues, or inflame our vices. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Princes rule the people, and their own passions rule Princes; but Providence can over-rule the whole, and draw the instruments of his inscrutable purposes from the vices, no less than the virtues of Kings. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity as to those mysterious powers assumed by others. -- Charles Caleb Colton
He that can please nobody is not so much to be pitied as he that nobody can please. -- Charles Caleb Colton
In cases of doubtful morality, it is usual to say is there any harm in doing this? This question may sometimes be best answered by asking ourselves another; is there any harm in letting it alone? -- Charles Caleb Colton
Mental pleasures never cloy; unlike those of the body, they are increased by reputation, approved by reflection, and strengthened by enjoyment. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Most importantly: Don't adjust your results to build up the ego of the chief strategist. Especially if the strategist is you. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live -- Charles Caleb Colton
The road to glory would cease to be arduous if it were trite and trodden; and great minds must be ready not only to take opportunities but to make them. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The enthusiast has been compared to a man walking in a fog; everything immediately around him, or in contact with him, appears sufficiently clear and luminous; but beyond the little circle of which he himself is the centre, all is mist and error and confusion. -- 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
A society composed of none but the wicked could not exist; it contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction, and without a flood, would be swept away from the earth by the deluge of its own iniquity. -- Charles Caleb Colton
A wise man may be duped as well as a fool; but the fool publishes the triumph of the deceiver. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth; all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The further we advance in knowledge, the more simplicity shall we discover in those primary rules that regulate all the apparently endless, complicated, and multiform operations of the Godhead. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Criticism discloses that which it would fain conceal, but conceals that which it professes to disclose; it is therefore, read by the discerning, not to discover the merits of an author, but the motives of his critic. -- Charles Caleb Colton
In pulpit eloquence, the grand difficulty lies here
to give the subject all the dignity it so fully deserves, without attaching any importance to ourselves. The Christian messenger cannot think too highly of his prince, nor too humbly of himself. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The mob is a monster, with the hands of Briareus, but the head of Polyphemus,
strong to execute, but blind to perceive. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The young fancy that their follies are mistaken by the old for happiness. The old fancy that their gravity is mistaken by the young for wisdom. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Man is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Self-love, in a well-regulated breast, is as the steward of the household, superintending the expenditure, and seeing that benevolence herself should be prudential, in order to be permanent, by providing that the reservoir which feeds should also be fed. -- 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
Religion, like its votaries, while it exists on earth, must have a body as well as a soul. A religion purely spiritual might suit a being as pure, but men are compound animals; and the body too often lords it over the mind. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Some are cursed with the fullness of satiety; and how can they bear the ills of life when its very pleasures fatigue them? -- Charles Caleb Colton
Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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
Honor is unstable and seldom the same; for she feeds upon opinion, and is as fickle as her food. -- Charles Caleb Colton
If once a woman breaks through the barriers of decency, her ease is desperate; and if she goes greater lengths than the men, and leaves the pale of propriety farther behind her, it is because she is aware that all return is prohibited, and by none so strongly as by her own sex. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Life often presents us with a choice of evils, rather than of goods. -- Charles Caleb Colton
When the air balloon was first discovered, some one flippantly asked Dr. Franklin what was the use of it. The doctor answered this question by asking another: "What is the use of a new-born infant? It may become a man." -- Charles Caleb Colton
If you are under obligations to many, it is prudent to postpone the recompensing of one, until it be in your power to remunerate all; otherwise you will make more enemies by what you give, than by what you withhold. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Patience is the support of weakness; impatience the ruin of strength. -- Charles Caleb Colton
A man who knows the world will not only make the most of everything he does know, but of many things he does not know, and will gain more credit by his adroit mode of hiding his ignorance than the pedant by his awkward attempt to exhibit his erudition. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Alas! how has the social spirit of Christianity been perverted by fools at one time, and by knaves and bigots at another; by the self-tormentors of the cell, and the all-tormentors of the conclave! -- Charles Caleb Colton
Falsehood is often rocked by truth, but she soon outgrows her cradle and discards her nurse. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Be real and adjust you strategy according to honest results. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Genius, in one respect, is like gold; numbers of persons are constantly writing about both, who have neither. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The science of legislation is like that of medicine in one respect: that it is far more easy to point out what will do harm than what will do good. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There is one passage in the Scriptures to which all the potentates of Europe seem to have given their unanimous assent and approbation ... "There went out a decree in the days of Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed." -- Charles Caleb Colton
Physicians must discover the weaknesses of the human mind, and even condescend to humor them, or they will never be called in to cure the infirmities of the body. -- Charles Caleb Colton
When you have nothing to say, say nothing. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There are only two things in which the false professors of all religions have agreed
to persecute all other sects and to plunder their own. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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
It has been well observed that the tongue discovers the state of the mind no less than that of the body; but in either case, before the philosopher or the physician can judge, the patient must open his mouth. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Unity of opinion is indeed a glorious and desirable thing, and its circle cannot be too strong and extended, if the centre be truth; but if the centre be error, the greater the circumference, the greater the evil. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Style is indeed the valet of genius, and an able one too; but as the true gentleman will appear, even in rags, so true genius will shine, even through the coarsest style. -- 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
He that abuses his own profession will not patiently bear with any one else who does so. And this is one of our most subtle operations of self-love. For when we abuse our own profession, we tacitly except ourselves; but when another abuses it, we are far from being certain that this is the case. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Any one can give advice, such as it is, but only a wise man knows how to profit by it. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Insults are engendered from vulgar minds, like toadstools from a dunghill. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Some frauds succeed from the apparent candor, the open confidence, and the full blaze of ingenuousness that is thrown around them. The slightest mystery would excite suspicion and ruin all. Such stratagems may be compared to the stars; they are discoverable by darkness and hidden only by light. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Afflictions sent by providence melt the constancy of the noble minded, but confirm the obduracy of the vile, as the same furnace that liquefies the gold, hardens the clay Charles Caleb Colton. -- Charles Caleb Colton
In science, reason is the guide; in poetry, taste. The object of the one is truth, which is uniform and indivisible; the object of the other is beauty, which is multiform and varied. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is always easy to shut a book, but not quite so easy to get rid of a lettered coxcomb. -- Charles Caleb Colton
We devote the activity of our youth to revelry and the decrepitude of our old age to repentance: and we finish the farce by bequeathing our dead bodies to the chancel, which when living, we interdicted from the church. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity,
as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame -- Charles Caleb Colton
Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Literature has her quacks no less than medicine, and they are divided into two classes; those who have erudition without genius, and those who have volubility without depth; we shall get second-hand sense from the one, and original nonsense from the other. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There are both dull correctness and piquant carelessness; it is needless to say which will command the most readers and have the most influence. -- Charles Caleb Colton
That theatrical kind of virtue, which requires publicity for its stage, and an applauding world for its audience, could not be depended on, in the secrecy of solitude, or the retirement of a desert. -- 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
The excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Were the life of man prolonged, he would become such a proficient in villainy, that it would become necessary again to drown or to burn the world. Earth would become an hell; for future rewards when put off to a great distance, would cease to encourage, and future punishments to alarm. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate, the nearer we arrive unto it. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There are three kinds of power,
wealth, strength, and talent; but as old age always weakens, often destroys, the two latter, the aged are induced to cling with the greater avidity to the former. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Secrecy of design, when combined with rapidity of execution, like me column that guided Israel in the deserts, becomes the guardian pillar of light and fire to our friends, a cloud of overwhelming and impenetrable darkness to our enemies. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Subtract from the great man all that he owes to opportunity, all that he owes to chance, and all that he gained by the wisdom of his friends and the folly of his enemies, and the giant will often be seen to be a pygmy. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Nobility is a river that sets with a constant and undeviating current, directly into the great Pacific Ocean of Time; but, unlike all other rivers, it is more grand at its source, than at its termination. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There are three difficulties in authorship: to write anything worth publishing, to find honest men to publish it, and to find sensible men to read it. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Those that will not permit their wealth to do any good for others ... cut themselves off from the truest pleasure here and the highest happiness later. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Our minds are as different as our faces. We are all traveling to one destination: happiness, but few are going by the same road. -- Charles Caleb Colton
For all the practical purposes of life, truth might as well be in a prison as in the folio of a schoolman; and those who release her from her cobwebbed shelf and teach her to live with men have the merit of liberating, if not of discovering, her. -- Charles Caleb Colton
All adverse and depressing influences can be overcome, not by fighting, by by rising above them. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Attempts at reform, when they fail, strengthen despotism, as he that struggles tightens those cords he does not succeed in breaking. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Philosophy is a bully that talks loud when the danger is at a distant; but, the moment she is pressed hard by an enemy, she is nowhere to be found and leaves the brunt of the battle to be fought by her steady, humble comrade, religion. -- Charles Caleb Colton
A house may draw visitors, but it is the possessor alone that can detain them. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The integrity that lives only on opinion would starve without it. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Of all the passions, jealousy is that which exacts the hardest service, and pays the bitterest wages. Its service is to watch the success of one's enemy; its wages to be sure of it. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Theory is worth but little, unless it can explain its own phenomena, and it must effect this without contradicting itself; therefore, the facts are sometimes assimilated to the theory, rather than the theory to the facts. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is good to act as if. It is even better to grow to the point where it is no longer an act. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Fortune has been considered the guardian divinity of fools; and, on this score, she has been accused of blindness; but it should rather be adduced as a proof of her sagacity, when she helps those who cannot help themselves. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There is this paradox in fear: he is most likely to inspire it in others who has none himself! -- Charles Caleb Colton
To admit that there is any such thing as chance, in the common acceptation of the term, would be to attempt to establish a power independent of God. -- Charles Caleb Colton
He that has never known adversity is but half acquainted with others, or with himself. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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
A beautiful woman, if poor, should use double circumspection; for her beauty will tempt others, her poverty herself. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Our wealth is often a snare to ourselves, and always a temptation to others. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Subtlety will sometimes give safety, no less than strength; and minuteness has sometimes escaped, where magnitude would have been crushed. The little animal that kills the boa is formidable chiefly from its insignificance, which is incompressible by the folds of its antagonist. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent; for wealth, although it be a far less efficient source of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible. -- 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
He that openly tells, his friends all that he thinks of them, must expect that they will secretly tell his enemies much that they do not think of him. -- Charles Caleb Colton
A hug is worth a thousand words. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Custom is the law of one description of fools, and fashion of another; but the two parties often clash
for precedent is the legislator of the first, and novelty of the last. Custom, therefore, looks to things that are past, and fashion to things that are present. -- Charles Caleb Colton
War is a game in which princes seldom win, the people never. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Death is like thunder in two particulars; we are alarmed, at the sound of it; and it is formidable only from that which preceded it. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Memory is the friend of wit, but the treacherous ally of invention; there are many books that owe their success to two things; good memory of those who write them, and the bad memory of those who read them -- Charles Caleb Colton
He that can enjoy the intimacy of the great, and on no occasion disgust them by familiarity, or disgrace himself by servility, proves that he is as perfect a gentleman by nature as his companions are by rank. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is more easy to forgive the weak who have injured us than the powerful whom we have injured. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Wit in women is a jewel, which, unlike all others, borrows lustre from its setting, rather than bestows it; since nothing is so easy as to fancy a very beautiful woman extremely witty. -- Charles Caleb Colton
A lady of fashion will sooner excuse a freedom flowing from admiration than a slight resulting from indifference. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The reason why great men meet with so little pity or attachment in adversity, would seem to be this: the friends of a great man were made by his fortune, his enemies by himself, and revenge is a much more punctual paymaster than gratitude. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Deformity of the heart I call
The worst deformity of all;
For what is form, or what is face,
But the soul's index, or its case? -- Charles Caleb Colton
Contemporaries appreciate the person rather than their merit, posterity will regard the merit rather than the person. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Neutrality is no favorite with Providence, for we are so formed that it is scarcely possible for us to stand neuter in our hearts, although we may deem it prudent to appear so in our actions -- Charles Caleb Colton
When I meet with any persons who write obscurely or converse confusedly, I am apt to suspect two things; first, that such persons do not understand themselves; and secondly, that they are not worthy of being understood by others. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The breast of a good man is a little heaven commencing on earth; where the Deity sits enthroned with unrivaled influence, every subjugated passion, like the wind and storm, fulfilling his word. -- Charles Caleb Colton
He [the miser] falls down and worships the god of this world, but will have neither its pomps, its vanities nor its pleasures for his trouble. -- Charles Caleb Colton
He that gives a portion of his time and talent to the investigation of mathematical truth, will come to all other questions with a decided advantage over his opponents. -- Charles Caleb Colton
How strange it is that we of the present day are constantly praising that past age which our fathers abused, and as constantly abusing that present age, which our children will praise. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Let us not be too prodigal when we are young, nor too parsimonious when we are old. Otherwise we shall fall into the common error of those, who, when they had the power to enjoy, had not the prudence to acquire; and when they had the prudence to acquire, had no longer the power to enjoy. -- Charles Caleb Colton
An act by which we make one friend and one enemy is a losing game; because revenge is a much stronger principle than gratitude -- Charles Caleb Colton
Sturdy beggars can bear stout denials. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Where we cannot invent, we may at least improve. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Antithesis may be the blossom of wit, but it will never arrive at maturity unless sound sense be the trunk and truth the root. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Happiness is that single and glorious thing which is the very light and sun of the whole animated universe; and where she is not it were better that nothing should be. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Grant graciously what you cannot refuse safely and conciliate those you cannot conquer. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Wealth ... is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much but wants more. -- 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
The seeds of repentance are sown in youth by pleasure, but the harvest is reaped in age by pain. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Modesty is the richest ornament of a woman ... the want of it is her greatest deformity. -- Charles Caleb Colton
That author, however, who has thought more than he has read, read more than he has written, and written more than he has published, if he does not command success, has at least deserved it. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Deliberate with caution, but act with decision and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Never join with your friend when he abuses his horse or his wife, unless the one is about to be sold, the other to be buried. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Men are more readily contented with no intellectual light than with a little; and wherever they have been taught to acquire some knowledge in order to please others, they have most generally gone on to acquire more, to please themselves. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride. -- Charles Caleb Colton
A Christian builds his fortitude on a better foundation than stoicism; he is pleased with every thing that happens, because he knows it could not happen unless it first pleased God, and that which pleases Him must be best. -- Charles Caleb Colton
I'm aiming by the time I'm fifty to stop being an adolescent. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The wisest man may be wiser to-day than he was yesterday, and to-morrow than he is to-day. Total freedom from change would imply total freedom from error; but this is the prerogative of Omniscience alone. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Habit will reconcile us to everything but change -- Charles Caleb Colton
The victim to too severe a law is considered as a martyr rather than a criminal. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Great minds had rather deserve contemporaneous applause without obtaining it, than obtain without deserving it. If it follow them it is well, but they will not deviate to follow it. -- 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
Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in their actions. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Repartee is perfect when it effects its purpose with a double edge. It is the highest order of wit, as it indicates the coolest yet quickest exercise of genius, at a moment when the passions are roused. -- Charles Caleb Colton
When in reading we meet with any maxim that may be of use, we should take it for our own, and make an immediate application of it, as we would of the advice of a friend whom we have purposely consulted. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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
Envy, if surrounded on all sides by the brightness of another's prosperity, like the scorpion confined within a circle of fire, will sting itself to death. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Anguish of mind has driven thousands to suicide; anguish of body, none. This proves that the health of the mind is of far more consequence to our happiness than the health of the body, although both are deserving of much more attention than either of them receive. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Heroism, self-denial, and magnanimity, in all instances where they do not spring from a principle of religion, are but splendid altars on which we sacrifice one kind of self-love to another. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is adverse to talent to be consorted and trained up with inferior minds and inferior companions, however high they may rank. The foal of the racer neither finds out his speed nor calls out his powers if pastured out with the common herd, that are destined for the collar and the yoke. -- Charles Caleb Colton
In the pursuit of knowledge, follow it wherever it is to be found; like fern, it is the produce of all climates, and like coin, its circulation is not restricted to any particular class. -- 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
Emulation looks out for merits, that she may exalt herself by a victory; envy spies out blemishes that she may lower another by defeat. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is a mistake, that a lust for power is the mark of a great mind; for even the weakest have been captivated by it; and for minds of the highest order, it has no charms. -- Charles Caleb Colton
To cure us of our immoderate love of gain, we should seriously consider how many goods there are that money will not purchase, and these the best; and how many evils there are that money will not remedy, and these the worst. -- Charles Caleb Colton
An Irish man fights before he reasons, a Scotchman reasons before he fights, an Englishman is not particular as to the order of precedence, but will do either to accommodate his customers. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and hell a fable. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There are prating coxcombs in the world who would rather talk than listen, although Shakespeare himself were the orator, and human nature the theme! -- Charles Caleb Colton
The three great apostles of practical atheism, that make converts without persecuting, and retain them without preaching, are wealth, health and power. -- Charles Caleb Colton
If a horse has four legs, and I'm riding it, I think I can win. -- Charles Caleb Colton
We should have all our communications with men, as in the presence of God; and with God, as in the presence of men. -- 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
A thorough-paced antiquary not only remembers what all other people have thought proper to forget, but he also forgets what all other people think is proper to remember. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There are many women who have never intrigued, and many men who have never gamed; but those who have done either but once are very extraordinary animals. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There can be no Christianity where there is no charity -- Charles Caleb Colton
The good opinion of our fellow men is the strongest, though not the purest motive to virtue. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The Grecian's maxim would indeed be a sweeping clause in Literature; it would reduce many a giant to a pygmy; many a speech to a sentence; and many a folio to a primer. -- Charles Caleb Colton
If the prodigal quits life in debt to others, the miser quits it still deeper in debt to himself. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Courage is generosity of the highest order, for the brave are prodigal of the most precious things. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Hope is a prodigal young heir, and experience is his banker. -- 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
Love may exist without jealousy, although this is rare: but jealousy may exist without love, and this is common; for jealousy can feed on that which is bitter no less than on that which is sweet, and is sustained by pride as often as by affection. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Many a man may thank his talent for his rank, but no man has ever been able to return the compliment by thanking his rank for his talent. -- Charles Caleb Colton
By paying our other debts, we are equal with all mankind; but in refusing to pay a debt of revenge, we are superior. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Revenge is a debt, in the paying of which the greatest knave is honest and sincere, and, so far as he is able, punctual. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Pleasure is to women what the sun is to the flower; if moderately enjoyed, it beautifies, it refreshes, and it improves; if immoderately, it withers, deteriorates and destroys. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Fortune, like other females, prefers a lover to a master, and submits with impatience to control; but he that wooes her with opportunity and importunity will seldom court her in vain. -- Charles Caleb Colton
As that gallant can best affect a pretended passion for one woman who has no true love for another, so he that has no real esteem for any of the virtues can best assume the appearance of them all. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is not so difficult a task as to plant new truths, as to root out old errors -- Charles Caleb Colton
There are three modes of bearing the ills of life, by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Pedantry prides herself on being wrong by rules; while common sense is contented to be right without them. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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
Women who are the least bashful are not unfrequently the most modest; and we are never more deceived than when we would infer any laxity of principle from that freedom of demeanor which often arises from a total ignorance of vice. -- 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
The greatest and most amiable privilege which the rich enjoy over the poor is that which they exercise the least
the privilege of making others happy. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Some persons will tell you, with an air of the miraculous, that they recovered although they were given over; whereas they might with more reason have said, they recovered because they were given over. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The poorest man would not part with health for money, but the richest would gladly part with all their money for health. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The hate which we all bear with the most Christian patience is the hate of those who envy us. -- Charles Caleb Colton
As the rays of the sun, notwithstanding their velocity, injure not the eye, by reason of their minuteness, so the attacks of envy, notwithstanding their number, ought not to wound our virtue by reason of their insignificance. -- Charles Caleb Colton
A leveller has long ago been set down as a ridiculous and chimerical being, who, if he could finish his work to-day, would have to begin it again tomorrow. -- Charles Caleb Colton
If a cause be good, the most violent attack of its enemies will not injure it so much as an injudicious defence of it by its friends. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Those graces which from their presumed facility encourage all to attempt an imitation of them, are usually the most inimitable. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Make no enemies; he is insignificant indeed that can do thee no harm. -- Charles Caleb Colton
We often pretend to fear what we really despise, and more often despise what we really fear. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Anger is practical awkwardness. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Adroit observers will find that some who affect to dislike flattery, may yet be flattered indirectly, by a well seasoned abuse and ridicule of their rivals. -- Charles Caleb Colton
God will excuse our prayers for ourselves whenever we are prevented from them by being occupied in such good works as to entitle us to the prayers of others. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The French revolution was a .eune invented and constructed for the purpose of manufacturing liberty; but it had neither lever cogs, nor adjusting powers, and the consequences were that it worked so rapidly that it destroyed its own inventors, and set itself on fire. -- Charles Caleb Colton
For one man who sincerely pities our misfortunes, there are a thousand who sincerely hate our success. -- 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
The greatest genius is never so great as when it is chastised and subdued by the highest reason. -- Charles Caleb Colton
When a man has displayed talent in some particular path, and left all competitors behind him in it, the world are too apt to give him credit for universality of genius, and to anticipate for him success in all that he undertakes. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Novels may teach us as wholesome a moral as the pulpit. There are "sermons in stones," in healthy books, and "good in everything. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is seldom that statesmen have the option of choosing between a good and an evil. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Pride is less ashamed of being ignorant, than of being instructed, and she looks too high to find that, which very often lies beneath her. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Avarice begets more vices than Priam did children and like Priam survives them all. It starves its keeper to surfeit those who wish him dead, and makes him submit to more mortifications to lose heaven than the martyr undergoes to gain it. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Logic is a large drawer, containing some useful instruments, and many more that are superfluous. A wise man will look into it for two purposes, to avail himself of those instruments that are really useful, and to admire the ingenuity with which those that are not so, are assorted and arranged. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The press is the foe of rhetoric, but the friend of reason. -- Charles Caleb Colton
False reasoners are often best confuted by giving them the full swing of their own absurdities. -- Charles Caleb Colton
When all moves equally (says Pascal), nothing seems to move as in a vessel under sail; and when all run by common consent into vice, none appear to do so. He that stops first, views as from a fixed point the horrible extravagance that transports the rest. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Where true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a pretext for a thousand. -- Charles Caleb Colton
None are so seldom found alone, and are so soon tired of their own company, as those coxcombs who are on the best terms with themselves. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Wars are to the body politic, what drams are to the individual. There are times when they may prevent a sudden death, but if frequently resorted to, or long persisted in, they heighten the energies only to hasten the dissolution. -- 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
Where thou perceivest knowledge, bend the ear of attention and respect; But yield not further to the teaching, than as thy mind is warranted by reasons. Better is an obstinant disputant, that yieldeth inch by inch, Than the shallow traitor to himself, who surrendereth to half an argument. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There are two modes of establishing our reputation; to be praised by honest men, and to be abused by rogues. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There are two things which ought to teach us to think but meanly of human glory; the very best have had their calumniators, the very worst their panegyrists. -- Charles Caleb Colton
To judge by the event is an error all commit: for in every instance courage, if crowned with success, is heroism; if clouded by defeat, temerity. When Nelson fought his battle in the Sound, it was the result alone that decided whether he was to kiss a hand at court or a rod at a court-martial. -- Charles Caleb Colton
If often happens too, both in courts and in cabinets, that there are two things going on together,
a main plot and an under-plot; and he that understands only one of them will, in all probability, be the dupe of both. A mistress may rule a monarch, but some obscure favorite may rule the mistress. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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
The cynic who twitted Aristippus by observing that the philosopher who could dine on herbs might despise the company of a king, was well replied to by Aristippus, when he remarked that the philosopher who could enjoy the company or a king might also despise a dinner of herbs. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Be very slow to believe that you are wiser than all others; it is a fatal but common error. Where one has been saved by a true estimation of another's weakness, thousands have been destroyed by a false appreciation of their own strength. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Shakespeare, Butler and Bacon have rendered it extremely difficult for all who come after them to be sublime, witty or profound. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Man, if he compare himself with all that he can see, is at the zenith of power; but if he compare himself with all that he can conceive, he is at the nadir of weakness. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Oppression cannot prosper where none will submit to be enslaved. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is with honesty in one particular as with wealth,
those that have the thing care less about the credit of it than those who have it not. No poor man can well afford to be thought so, and the less of honesty a finished rogue possesses the less he can afford to be supposed to want it. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Jealousy is sustained as often by pride as by affection. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Truth can hardly be expected to adapt herself to the crooked policy and wily sinuosities of worldly affairs; for truth, like light, travels only in straight lines. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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
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
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
Hannibal knew better how to conquer than how to profit by the conquest; and Napoleon was more skilful in taking positions than in maintaining them. As to reverses, no general cart presume to say that he may not be defeated; but he can, and ought to say, that he will not be surprised. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There are too many who reverse both the principles and the practice of the Apostles; they become all things to all men, not to serve others, but themselves; and they try all things only to hold fast that which is bad. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Time, the cradle of hope, but the grave of ambition, is the stern corrector of fools, but the salutary counselor of the wise, bringing all they dread to the one, and all they desire to the other. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Expect not praise without envy until you are dead. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Worldly wisdom dictates to her disciples the propriety of dressing somewhat beyond their means, but of living somewhat within them. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Women that are the least bashful are often the most modest. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is an easy and vulgar thing to please the mob, and not a very arduous task to astonish them; but essentially to benefit and to improve them is a work fraught with difficulty, and teeming with danger. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind. -- Charles Caleb Colton
That is true beauty which has not only a substance, but a spirit; a beauty that we must intimately know, justly to appreciate. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Brutes leave ingratitude to man. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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
Pride requires very costly food-its keeper's happiness. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The smiling daughter of the storm. -- Charles Caleb Colton
We should choose our books as we would our companions, for their sterling and intrinsic merit. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Mystery magnifies danger as the fog the sun. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Men's arguments often prove nothing but their wishes. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There are some men who are fortune's favorites, and who, like cats, light forever on their legs. -- Charles Caleb Colton
A man's profundity may keep him from opening on a first interview, and his caution on a second; but I should suspect his emptiness, if he carried on his reserve to a third. -- 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
Perfection doesn't exist ... only good attempts. -- Charles Caleb Colton
None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them. -- Charles Caleb Colton
God is as great in minuteness as He is in magnitude. -- Charles Caleb Colton
This world cannot explain its own difficulties without the assistance of another. -- Charles Caleb Colton
We may anticipate bliss, but who ever drank of that enchanted cup unalloved? -- Charles Caleb Colton
Butler compared the tongues of these eternal talkers to race-horses, which go the faster the less weight they carry. -- Charles Caleb Colton
When we are in the company of sensible men, we ought to be doubly cautious of talking too much, lest we lose two good things, their good opinion and our own improvement; for what we have to say we know, but what they have to say we know not. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is not until we have passed through the furnace that we are made to know how much dross there is in our composition. -- Charles Caleb Colton
We shall at all times chance upon men of recondite acquirements, but whose qualifications, from the incommunicative and inactive habits of their owners, are as utterly useless to others as though the possessors had them not. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Time is the measurer of all things, but is itself immeasurable, and the grand discloser of all things, but is itself undisclosed. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Most men know what they hate; few what they love -- Charles Caleb Colton
Calumny crosses oceans, scales mountains and traverses deserts, with greater ease than the Scythian Abaris, and like him, rides upon a poisoned arrow. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The upright, if he suffer calumny to move him, fears the tongue of man more than the eye of God. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Vanity finds in self-love so powerful an ally that it storms, as it were, by a coup de main,, the citadel of our heads, where, having blinded the two watchmen, it readily descends into the heart. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Words are in this respect like water, that they often take their taste, flavour, and character, from the mouth out of which they proceed, as the water from the channel through which it flows. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Sir Richard Steele has observed, that there is this difference between the Church of Rome and the Church of England: the one professes to be infallible, the other to be never in the wrong. -- 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
There is a holy love and a holy rage, and our best virtues never glow so brightly as when our passions are excited in the cause. Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues; and the best of us are better when roused. -- 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
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. -- Charles Caleb Colton
None of us are so much praised or censured as we think. -- Charles Caleb Colton
From its very inaction, idleness ultimately becomes the most active cause of evil; as a palsy is more to be dreaded than a fever. The Turks have a proverb which says that the devil tempts all other men, but that idle men tempt the devil. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There are some who write, talk, and think, so much about vice and virtue, that they have no time to practice either the one or the other. -- Charles Caleb Colton
No metaphysician ever felt the deficiency of language so much as the grateful. -- 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
Law and equity are two things which God has joined, but which man has put asunder. -- 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
It is astonishing how much more people are interested in lengthening life than improving it. -- 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
We should not be too niggardly in our praise, for men will do more to support a character than to raise one. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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
Of all the faculties of the mind, memory is the first that flourishes, and the first that dies. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is far better to borrow experience than to buy it. -- Charles Caleb Colton
When we feel a strong desire to thrust our advice upon others, it is usually because we suspect their weakness; but we ought rather to suspect our own. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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
Sometimes the greatest adversities turn out to be the greatest blessings. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Strong as our passions are, they may be starved into submission, and conquered without being killed. -- Charles Caleb Colton
That cowardice is incorrigible which the love of power cannot overcome. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Eloquence is the language of nature, and cannot be learned in the schools; but rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least will most excel in. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Opinions, like showers, are generated in high places, but they invariably descend into lower ones, and ultimately flow down to the people as rain unto the sea. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Duke Chartres used to boast that no man could have less real value for character than himself, yet he would gladly give twenty thousand pounds for a good one, because he could immediately make double that sum by means of it. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Most plagiarists, like the drone, have neither taste to select, industry to acquire, nor skill to improve, but impudently pilfer the honey ready prepared, from the hive. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Fame is an undertaker that pays but little attention to the living, but bedizens the dead, furnishes out their funerals, and follows them to the grave -- Charles Caleb Colton
Money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed. Health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied. -- Charles Caleb Colton
In all societies, it is advisable to associate if possible with the highest; not that the highest are always the best, but because, if disgusted there, we can descend at any time; but if we begin with the lowest, to ascend is impossible. -- Charles Caleb Colton
If merited, no courage can stand against its just indignation. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The masses procure their opinions ready made in open market. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The policy that can strike only while the iron is hot will be overcome by that perseverance, which ... can make that iron hot by striking and he that can only rule the storm must yield to him who can both raise and rule it. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Too high an appreciation of our own talents is the chief cause why experience preaches to us all in vain. -- Charles Caleb Colton
A power above all human responsibility ought to be above all human attainment. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Nobility of birth does not always insure a corresponding unity of mind; if it did, it would always act as a stimulus to noble actions; but it sometimes acts as a clog rather than a spur. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Theories are private property, but truth is common stock. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Dreams ought to produce no conviction whatever on philosophical minds. If we consider how many dreams are dreamt every night, and how many events occur every day, we shall no longer wonder at those accidental coincidences which ignorance mistakes for verifications. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Those who bequeath unto themselves a pompous funeral, are at just so much expense to inform the world of something that had much better be concealed; namely, that their vanity has survived themselves. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is not so difficult a task to plant new truths, as to root out old errors; for there is this paradox in men, they run after that which is new, but are prejudiced in favor of that which is old. -- Charles Caleb Colton
He that swells in prosperity will be sure to shrink in adversity. -- Charles Caleb Colton
We are not more ingenious in searching out bad motives for good actions when performed by others, than good motives for bad actions when performed by ourselves. -- Charles Caleb Colton
If martyrdom is now on the decline, it is not because martyrs are less zealous, but because martyr-mongers are more wise. The light of intellect has put out the fire of persecution, as other fires are observed to smoulder before the light of the same. -- Charles Caleb Colton
God is on the side of virtue; for whoever dreads punishment suffers it, and whoever deserves it, dreads it . -- Charles Caleb Colton
He that will often put eternity and the world before him, and who will dare to look steadfastly at both of them, will find that the more often he contemplates them, the former will grow greater, and the latter less. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Short as life is, some find it long enough to outlive their characters, their constitutions and their estates. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Cruel men are the greatest lovers of Mercy, avaricious men of generosity, and proud men of humility; that is to say, in other, not in themselves. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Purity lives and derives its life solely from the Spirit of God. -- Charles Caleb Colton
"Lawyers Are": The only civil delinquents whose judges must of necessity be chosen from (amongst) themselves. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Mystery magnifies danger, as a fog the sun, the hand that warned Belshazzar derived its horrifying effect from the want of a body. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Pedantry crams our heads with learned lumber and takes out our brains to make room for it. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Religion has treated knowledge sometimes as an enemy, sometimes as a hostage; often as a captive and more often as a child; but knowledge has become of age, and religion must either renounce her acquaintance, or introduce her as a companion and respect her as a friend. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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! -- Charles Caleb Colton
Ambition is to the mind what the cap is to the falcon; it blinds us first, and then compels us to tower by reason of our blindness. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Avarice has ruined more men than prodigality, and the blindest thoughtlessness of expenditure has not destroyed so many fortunes as the calculating but insatiable lust of accumulation. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Many books owe their success to the good memories of their authors and the bad memories of their readers. -- Charles Caleb Colton
With the offspring of genius, the law of parturition is reversed; the throes are in the conception, the pleasure in the birth. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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
The science of mathematics performs more than it promises, but the science of metaphysics promises more than it performs. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Friendship, of itself a holy tie, is made more sacred by adversity. -- 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
Time ... advances like the slowest tide, but retreats like the swiftest torrent. -- 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
Unlike the sun, intellectual luminaries shine brightest after they set. -- Charles Caleb Colton
A wise minister would rather preserve peace than gain a victory, because he knows that even the most successful war leaves nations generally more poor, always more profligate, than it found them. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is doubtful whether mankind are most indebted to those who like Bacon and Butler dig the gold from the mine of literature, or to those who, like Paley, purify it, stamp it, fix its real value, and give it currency and utility -- Charles Caleb Colton
That profound firmness which enabler a man to regard difficulties but as evils to be surmounted, no matter what shape they may assume. -- Charles Caleb Colton
True friendhip is like sound health: the value of it is seldom know until it is lost. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Women do not transgress the bounds of decorum so often as men; but when they do, they go greater lengths. -- Charles Caleb Colton
In order to try whether a vessel be leaky, we first prove it with water before we trust it with wine. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Much too oft we make life gloomy
When happy we might be, If we gathered more of sunshine, And not dark shadows see. -- Charles Caleb Colton
We submit to the society of those that can inform us, but we seek the society of those whom we can inform. And men of genius ought not to be chagrined if they see themselves neglected. For when we communicate knowledge, we are raised in our own estimation; but when we receive it, we are lowered. -- 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
Injuries accompanied with insults are never forgiven: all men, on these occasions, are good haters, and lay out their revenge at compound interest. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Fashions smile has given wit to dullness and grace to deformity, and has brought everything into vogue, by turns, but virtue. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The next thing to having wisdom ourselves, is to profit by that of others. -- Charles Caleb Colton
We ask advice, but we mean approbation. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Sincerely to aspire after virtue, is to gain her; and zealously to labour after her wages, is to receive them. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Doubt is the vestibule of faith. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is a common observation that any fool can get money; but they are not wise that think so. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Imitation is the sincerest of flattery. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Constant success shows us but one side of the world; adversity brings out the reverse of the picture. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is with antiquity as with ancestry, nations are proud of the one, and individuals of the other; but if they are nothing in themselves, that which is their pride ought to be their humiliation. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There were moments of despondency when Shakespeare thought himself no poet, and Raphael no painter; when the greatest wits have doubted the excellence of their happiest efforts. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Mathematicians have sought knowledge in figures, Philosophers in systems, Logicians in subtleties, and Metaphysicians in sounds. It is not in any nor in all of these. He that studies only men, will get the body of knowledge without the soul, and he that studies only books, the soul without the body. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Wit may do very well for a mistress, but [I] should prefer reason for a wife. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Time,- that black and narrow isthmus between two eternities. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The head of dullness, unlike the tail of the torpedo, loses nothing of the benumbing and lethargizing influence by reiterated discharges. -- Charles Caleb Colton
You cannot separate charity and religion. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There is this paradox in pride - it makes some men ridiculous, but prevents others from becoming so. -- Charles Caleb Colton
That is fine benevolence, finely executed, which, like the Nile, comes from hidden sources. -- Charles Caleb Colton
No improvement that takes place in either sex can possibly be confined to itself. Each is a universal mirror to each, and the respective refinement of the one will always be in reciprocal proportion to the polish of the other. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Error, when she retraces her steps, has farther to go before she can arrive at truth than ignorance. -- 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
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
Atheism is a system which can communicate neither warmth nor illumination, except from those fagots which your mistaken zeal has lighted up for its destruction. -- 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
Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Riches may enable us to confer favors, but to confer them with propriety and grace requires a something that riches cannot give. -- Charles Caleb Colton
To look back to antiquity is one thing, to go back to it is another. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Charles Fox said that restorations were the most bloody of all revolutions; and he might have added that reformations are the best mode of preventing the necessity of either. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Power, like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer; it dignifies meanness; it magnifies littleness; to what is contemptible, it gives authority; to what is low, exaltation. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Diffidence is the better part of knowledge. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Kings and their subjects, masters and slaves, find a common level in two places - at the foot of the cross, and in the grave. -- Charles Caleb Colton
If Satan ever laughs, it must be at hypocrites; they are the greatest dupes he has; they serve him better than any others, and receive no wages. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Life is the jailer of the soul in this filthy prison, and its only deliverer is death. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of a good book. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Courage is like the diamond,
very brilliant; not changed by fire, capable of high polish, but except for the purpose of cutting hard bodies useless. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Philosophy is a goddess, whose head indeed is in heaven, but whose feet are upon earth; she attempts more than she accomplishes, and promises more than she performs. -- 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
Subtract from many modern poets all that may be found in Shakespeare, and trash will remain. -- Charles Caleb Colton
I have somewhere seen it observed that we should make the same use of a book that the bee does of a flower: she steals sweets from it, but does not injure it. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Two things, well considered, would prevent many quarrels: first, to have it well ascertained whether we are not disputing about terms, rather than things; and, secondly, to examine whether that on which we differ is worth contending about. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Instead of exhibiting talent in the hope that the world would forgive their eccentricities, they have exhibited only their eccentricities, in the hope that the world would give them credit for talent. -- 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
We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them. -- Charles Caleb Colton
If all seconds were as averse to duels as their principals, very little blood would be shed in that way. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Miss Edgeworth and Mme. de Stael have proved that there is no sex in style; and Mme. la Roche Jacqueline, and the Duchesse d'Angouleme have proved that there is no sex in courage. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is best, if possible, to deceive no one; for he that ... begins by deceiving others, will end ... by deceiving himself. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Temperate men drink the most, because they drink the longest. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Eloquence, to produce her full effect, should start from the head of the orator, as Pallas from the brain of Jove, completely armed and equipped. Diffidence, therefore, which is so able a mentor to the writer, would prove a dangerous counsellor for the orator. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Gaming is the child of avarice, but the parent of prodigality. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The plainest man who pays attention to women, will sometimes succeed as well as the handsomest man who does not. -- Charles Caleb Colton
My lowest days as a Christian have been more fulfilling and rewarding than all the days of glory in the White House. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase. -- Charles Caleb Colton
If rich, it is easy enough to conceal our wealth; but, if poor, it is not quite so easy to conceal our poverty. We shall find that it is less difficult to hide a thousand guineas, than one hole in our coat. -- Charles Caleb Colton
In civil jurisprudence it too often happens that there is so much law, that there is no room for justice, and that the claimant expires of wrong in the midst of right, as mariners die of thirst in the midst of water. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Shining outward qualities, although they may excite first-rate expectations, are not unusually found to be the companions of second-rate abilities. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is much easier to ruin a man of principle than a man of none, for he may be ruined through his scruples. Knavery is supple and can bend; but honesty is firm and upright, and yields not. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Logic and metaphysics make use of more tools than all the rest of the sciences put together, and do the least work. -- Charles Caleb Colton
For what are the triumphs of war, planned by ambition, executed by violence, and consummated by devastation? The means are the sacrifice of many, the end, the bloated aggrandizement of the few. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The most ridiculous of all animals is a proud priest; he cannot use his own tools without cutting his own fingers. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Honor is the most capricious in her rewards. She feeds us with air, and often pulls down our house, to build our monument. -- Charles Caleb Colton
No one knows where he who invented the plow was born, nor where he died; yet he has done more for humanity than the whole race of heroes who have drenched the earth with blood and whose deeds have been handed down with a precision proportionate only to the mischief they wrought. -- Charles Caleb Colton
If sensuality be our only happiness we ought to envy the brutes, for instinct is a surer, shorter, safer guide to such happiness than reason. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other -- Charles Caleb Colton
The most consistent men are not more unlike to others, than they are at times to themselves. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There are two metals, one of which is omnipotent in the cabinet, and the other in the camp
gold and iron. He that knows how to apply them both may indeed attain the highest station. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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
An honest man will continue to be so though surrounded on all sides by rogues. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Women generally consider consequences in love, seldom in resentment. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is far more easy to acquire a fortune like a knave, than to expend it, like a gentleman. -- Charles Caleb Colton
A fool is often as dangerous to deal with as a knave, and always more incorrigible. -- Charles Caleb Colton
He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool. -- Charles Caleb Colton
He that has never suffered extreme adversity knows not the full extent of his own depravation. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The acquirements of science may be termed the armour of the mind; but that armour would be worse than useless, that cost us all we had, and left us nothing to defend. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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, and in both instances, all that we can learn from baad ones is, that some much time has been worse than thrown away. -- Charles Caleb Colton
He that will only believe what he can fully comprehend must either have a very long head, or a very short creed. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It has been well observed that we should treat futurity as an aged friend from whom we expect a rich legacy. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Silence is less injurious than a weak reply. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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
Put on the livery of the best master only to serve the worst. -- Charles Caleb Colton
If a book really wants the patronage of a great name, it is a bad book; and if it be a good book, it wants it not. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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
He that has cut the claws of the lion will not feel quite secure until he has also drawn his teeth. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Is there anything more tedious than the often repeated tales of the old and forgetful? -- Charles Caleb Colton
Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past, even while we attempt to define it. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Fashion ... has brought every thing into vogue, by turns. -- Charles Caleb Colton
In great cities men are more callous both to the happiness and the misery of others, than in the country; for they are constantly in the habit of seeing both extremes. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The more gross the fraud the more glibly will it go down, and the more greedily be swallowed, since folly will always find faith where impostors will find imprudence. -- 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
Some reputed saints that have been canonized ought to have been cannonaded. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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
In all countries where nature does the most, man does the least. -- Charles Caleb Colton
He who knows himself knows others. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The seat of perfect contentment is in the head; for every individual is thoroughly satisfied with his own proportion of brains. -- Charles Caleb Colton
True goodness is not without that germ of greatness that can bear with patience the mistakes of the ignorant. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity, than straightforward and simple integrity in another. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The wealth is ultimately just a relative thing. As a person with little money and little more needs to rich guys money but really wishes -- Charles Caleb Colton
When we live habitually with the wicked, we become necessarily either their victim or their disciple; when we associate, on the contrary, with virtuous men, we form ourselves in imitation of their virtues, or, at least, lose every day something of our faults. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Total freedom from error is what none of us will allow to our neighbors; however we may be inclined to flirt a little with such spotless perfection ourselves. -- 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
By privileges, immunities, or prerogatives to give unlimited swing to the passions of individuals, and then to hope that they will restrain them, is about as reasonable as to expect that the tiger will spare the hart to browse upon the herbage. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Reply to wit with gravity, and to gravity with wit. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Folly disgusts us less by her ignorance than pedantry by her learning. -- Charles Caleb Colton
If you cannot avoid a quarrel with a blackguard, let your lawyer manage it, rather than yourself. No man sweeps his own chimney, but employs a chimney-sweeper, who has no objection to dirty work, because it is his trade. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There is but one pursuit in life which it is in the power of all to follow, and of all to attain. It is subject to no disappointments, since he that perseveres, makes every difficulty an advancement, and every contest a victory; and this is the pursuit of virtue. -- Charles Caleb Colton
That which we acquire with the most difficulty we retain the longest; as those who have earned a fortune are usually more careful of it than those who have inherited one. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise. There is one signal instance on record where this kind of prejudice was overcome by a miracle; but the age of miracles is past, while that of prejudice remains. -- 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
Many speak the truth when they say that they despise riches, but they mean the riches possessed by others. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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
We own almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is better to have wisdom without learning than learning without wisdom. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is with disease of the mind, as with those of the body; we are half dead before we understand our disorder, and half cured when we do. -- 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
We must be careful how we flatter fools too little, or wise men too much, for the flatterer must act the very reverse of the physician, and administer the strongest dose only to the weakest patient. -- Charles Caleb Colton
To be a mere verbal critic is what no man of genius would be if he could; but to be a critic of true taste and feeling is what no man without genius could be if he would. -- Charles Caleb Colton
We should have a glorious conflagration, if all who cannot put fire into their works would only consent to put their works into the fire. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The true motives of our actions, like the real pipes of an organ, are usually concealed; but the gilded and hollow pretext is pompously placed in the front for show. -- 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
Secrecy is the soul of all great designs. -- 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
Some read to think, these are rare; some to write, these are common; and some read to talk, and these form the great majority. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Wars of opinion, as they have been the most destructive, are also the most disgraceful of conflicts. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Those who have finished by making all others think with them, have usually been those who began by daring to think with themselves. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is curious that some learned dunces, because they can write nonsense in languages that are dead, should despise those that talk sense in languages that are living. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Mystery is not profoundness. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Whenever we find ourselves more inclined to persecute than to persuade, we may then be certain that our zeal has more of pride in it than of charity. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Were we as eloquent as angels we still would please people much more by listening rather than talking. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There are male as well as female gossips. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Slight sorrow for sin is sufficient, provided it at the same time produces amendment. -- Charles Caleb Colton
A coxcomb begins by determining that his own profession is the first; and he finishes by deciding that he is the first of profession. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Cheerfulness ought to be the viaticum vitae of their life to the old; age without cheerfulness is a Lapland winter without a sun. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is the briefest yet wisest maxim which tells us to meddle not. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There are two principles of established acceptance in morals; first, that self-interest is the mainspring of all of our actions, and secondly, that utility is the test of their value. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Revenge is fever in our own blood, to be cured only by letting the blood of another; but the remedy too often produces a relapse, which is remorse
a malady far more dreadful than the first disease, because it is incurable. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The inheritance of a distinguished and noble name is a proud inheritance to him who lives worthily of it. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Pride, like the magnet, constantly points to one object, self; but, unlike the magnet, it has no attractive pole, but at all points repels. -- 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: the pains of power are real, its pleasures imaginary. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Words indeed are but the signs and counters of knowledge, and their currency should be strictly regulated by the capital which they represent. -- Charles Caleb Colton
We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves; it is civil war. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Perhaps that is nearly the perfection of good writing which is original, but whose truth alone prevents the reader from suspecting that it is so; and which effects that for knowledge which the lens effects for the sunbeam, when it condenses its brightness in order to increase its force. -- Charles Caleb Colton
We injure mysteries, which are matters of faith, by any attempt at explanation in order to make them matters of reason. Could they be explained, they would cease to be mysteries; and it has been well said that a thing is not necessarily against reason because it happens to be above it. -- Charles Caleb Colton
As the gout seems privileged to attack the bodies of the wealthy, so ennui seems to exert a similar prerogative over their minds. -- Charles Caleb Colton
He that places himself neither higher nor lower than he ought to do exercises the truest humility. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There are many that despise half the world; but if there be any that despise the whole of it, it is because the other half despises them. -- Charles Caleb Colton
To despise our own species is the price we must often pay for knowledge of it. -- Charles Caleb Colton
A high degree of intellectual refinement in the female is the surest pledge society can have for the improvement of the male. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It may be observed of good writing, as of good blood, that it is much easier to say what it is composed of than to compose it. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Taking things not as they ought to be, but as they are, I fear it must be allowed that Macchiavelli will always have more disciples than Jesus. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Genius in one grand particular is like life. We know nothing of either but by their effects. -- Charles Caleb Colton
In all places, and in all times, those religionists who have believed too much have been more inclined to violence and persecution than those who have believed too little. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Light, whether it be material or moral, is the best reformer. -- Charles Caleb Colton
If we look backwards to antiquity it should be as those that are winning a race. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The sceptic, when he plunges into the depths of infidelity, like the miser who leaps from the shipwreck, will find that the treasures which he bears about him will only sink him deeper in the abyss. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The interests of society often render it expedient not to utter the whole truth, the interests of science never: for in this field we have much more to fear from the deficiency of truth than from its abundance. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The French have a saying that whatever excellence a man may exhibit in a public station he is very apt to be ridiculous in a private one. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The present time has one advantage over every other - it is our own. -- Charles Caleb Colton
To be satisfied with the acquittal of the world, though accompanied with the secret condemnation of conscience, this is the mark of a little mind; but it requires a soul of no common stamp to be satisfied with its own acquittal, and to despise the condemnation of the world. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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
What would you do if you knew for sure that no one would ever find out? -- Charles Caleb Colton
If you want enemies, excel others; if you want friends, let others excel you. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Most of our misfortunes are more supportable than the comments of our friends upon them. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues. -- Charles Caleb Colton
So blinded are we by our passions, that we suffer more to be damned than to be saved. -- Charles Caleb Colton
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
Peace is the evening star of the soul, as virtue is its sun, and the two are never far apart. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Let those who would affect singularity with success first determine to be very virtuous, and they will be sure to be very singular. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Levity is often less foolish and gravity less wise than each of them appears. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Our incomes should be like our shoes; if too small, they will gall and pinch us; but if too large, they will cause us to stumble and to trip. -- Charles Caleb Colton
There are some frauds so well conducted that it would be stupidity not to be deceived by them. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Some indeed there are who profess to despise all flattery, but even these are nevertheless to be flattered, by being told that they do despise it. -- Charles Caleb Colton
When all run by common consent into vice, none appear to do so. -- Charles Caleb Colton
As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints. -- 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
That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time. -- Charles Caleb Colton
It is easier to pretend to be what you are not than to hide what you really are; but he that can accomplish both has little to learn in hypocrisy. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Most females will forgive a liberty rather than a slight -- Charles Caleb Colton
That extremes beget extremes is an apothegm built on the most profound observation of the human mind. -- Charles Caleb Colton
The rich are more envied by those who have a little, than by those who have nothing. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Wealth is a relative thing since those who have little and want less are richer than those who have much but want more. -- Charles Caleb Colton
We often regret we did not do otherwise, when that very otherwise would, in all probability, have done for us. -- Charles Caleb Colton