Top 500 Charles Caleb Colton Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “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

452. “False reasoners are often best confuted by giving them the full swing of their own absurdities.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

454. “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

455. “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

456. “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

457. “Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

458. “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

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459. “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

460. “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

461. “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

462. “War kills men, and men deplore the loss; but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

464. “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

465. “There is this paradox in fear: he is most likely to inspire it in others who has none himself!”

— Charles Caleb Colton

466. “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

467. “A lady of fashion will sooner excuse a freedom flowing from admiration than a slight resulting from indifference.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

469. “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

470. “There are two things that bestow consequence; great possession, or great debts.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

471. “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

472. “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

473. “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

474. “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

475. “Where we cannot invent, we may at least improve.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

477. “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

478. “This world cannot explain its own difficulties without the assistance of another.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

479. “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

480. “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

481. “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

482. “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

483. “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

484. “Flattery is often a traffic of mutual meanness, where although both parties intend deception, neither are deceived.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

485. “It is seldom that statesmen have the option of choosing between a good and an evil.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

486. “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

487. “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

488. “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

489. “God is on the side of virtue; for whoever dreads punishment suffers it, and whoever deserves it, dreads it .”

— Charles Caleb Colton

490. “Reply to wit with gravity, and to gravity with wit.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

491. “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

492. “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

493. “None of us are so much praised or censured as we think.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

494. “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

495. “That is fine benevolence, finely executed, which, like the Nile, comes from hidden sources.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

496. “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

497. “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

498. “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

499. “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

500. “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