Charles Caleb Colton quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Charles Caleb Colton

Charles Caleb Colton Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Charles Caleb Colton on Wise Famous Quotes.

Diffidence is the better part of knowledge.

That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.

War is a game in which princes seldom win, the people never.

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?

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.

Where true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a pretext for a thousand.

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.

Some are cursed with the fullness of satiety; and how can they bear the ills of life when its very pleasures fatigue them?

Oppression cannot prosper where none will submit to be enslaved.

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.

Emulation looks out for merits, that she may exalt herself by a victory; envy spies out blemishes that she may lower another by defeat.

If merited, no courage can stand against its just indignation.

We should not be too niggardly in our praise, for men will do more to support a character than to raise one.

Doubt is the vestibule of faith.

Light, whether it be material or moral, is the best reformer.

Revenge is a debt, in the paying of which the greatest knave is honest and sincere, and, so far as he is able, punctual.

The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.

Purity lives and derives its life solely from the Spirit of God.

The science of mathematics performs more than it promises, but the science of metaphysics promises more than it performs.

We should choose our books as we would our companions, for their sterling and intrinsic merit.

If the prodigal quits life in debt to others, the miser quits it still deeper in debt to himself.

Of all the marvelous works of God, perhaps the one angels view with the most supreme astonishment, is a proud man.

Be real and adjust you strategy according to honest results.

The whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other

Pedantry prides herself on being wrong by rules; while common sense is contented to be right without them.

So blinded are we by our passions, that we suffer more to be damned than to be saved.

Our minds are as different as our faces. We are all traveling to one destination: happiness, but few are going by the same road.

When all run by common consent into vice, none appear to do so.

Men are born with two eyes but only one tongue in order that they should see twice as much as they say.

Money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed. Health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied.

Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase.

Reply to wit with gravity, and to gravity with wit.

Honor is the most capricious in her rewards. She feeds us with air, and often pulls down our house, to build our monument.

Sturdy beggars can bear stout denials.

Worldly wisdom dictates to her disciples the propriety of dressing somewhat beyond their means, but of living somewhat within them.

Wars of opinion, as they have been the most destructive, are also the most disgraceful of conflicts.

The excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age.

Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores.

A hug is worth a thousand words.

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.

Envy is the coward side of Hate, And all her ways are bleak and desolate.

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.

We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves; it is civil war.

It is always easy to shut a book, but not quite so easy to get rid of a lettered coxcomb.

Constant success shows us but one side of the world; adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.

Mental pleasures never cloy; unlike those of the body, they are increased by reputation, approved by reflection, and strengthened by enjoyment.

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.

Attempts at reform, when they fail, strengthen despotism, as he that struggles tightens those cords he does not succeed in breaking.

The next thing to having wisdom ourselves, is to profit by that of others.

Many books owe their success to the good memories of their authors and the bad memories of their readers.

Happiness ... leads none of us by the same route.

Friendship, of itself a holy tie, is made more sacred by adversity.

There are male as well as female gossips.

A house may draw visitors, but it is the possessor alone that can detain them.

No propagation or multiplication is more rapid that that of evil, unless it be checked; no growth more certain.

There are three modes of bearing the ills of life, by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion.

We own almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed.

The head of dullness, unlike the tail of the torpedo, loses nothing of the benumbing and lethargizing influence by reiterated discharges.

Were we as eloquent as angels we still would please people much more by listening rather than talking.

He that has cut the claws of the lion will not feel quite secure until he has also drawn his teeth.

Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.

A beautiful woman, if poor, should use double circumspection; for her beauty will tempt others, her poverty herself.

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.

There can be no Christianity where there is no charity

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.

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.

Brutes leave ingratitude to man.

No metaphysician ever felt the deficiency of language so much as the grateful.

Some reputed saints that have been canonized ought to have been cannonaded.

Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it; anything but live for it.

We may anticipate bliss, but who ever drank of that enchanted cup unalloved?

Life often presents us with a choice of evils, rather than of goods.

Logic and metaphysics make use of more tools than all the rest of the sciences put together, and do the least work.

Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride.

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.

It is not so difficult a task as to plant new truths, as to root out old errors

Law and equity are two things which God has joined, but which man has put asunder.

Success seems to be that which forms the distinction between confidence and conceit.

Hope is a prodigal young heir, and experience is his banker.

Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues.

An honest man will continue to be so though surrounded on all sides by rogues.

Deliberate with caution, but act with decision and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.

It is always safe to learn, even from our enemies; seldom safe to venture to instruct, even our friends.

God is as great in minuteness as He is in magnitude.

Fashions smile has given wit to dullness and grace to deformity, and has brought everything into vogue, by turns, but virtue.

Those who have finished by making all others think with them, have usually been those who began by daring to think with themselves.

Levity is often less foolish and gravity less wise than each of them appears.

Shakespeare, Butler and Bacon have rendered it extremely difficult for all who come after them to be sublime, witty or profound.

Genius, in one respect, is like gold; numbers of persons are constantly writing about both, who have neither.

What would you do if you knew for sure that no one would ever find out?

Of all the faculties of the mind, memory is the first that flourishes, and the first that dies.

The rich are more envied by those who have a little, than by those who have nothing.

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.

He who knows himself knows others.

Friendship often ends in love. But love in friendship; never.

The masses procure their opinions ready made in open market.

The press is the foe of rhetoric, but the friend of reason.

An act by which we make one friend and one enemy is a losing game; because revenge is a much stronger principle than gratitude

Novels may teach us as wholesome a moral as the pulpit. There are "sermons in stones," in healthy books, and "good in everything.

Wit may do very well for a mistress, but [I] should prefer reason for a wife.