Top 500 Charles Caleb Colton Quotes (2024 Update)
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451. “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

452. “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

453. “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

454. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

456. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

458. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

461. “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

462. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

464. “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

465. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

467. “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

468. “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

469. “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

470. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

472. “Pride requires very costly food-its keeper’s happiness.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

473. “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

474. “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

475. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

477. “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

478. “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

479. “The greatest genius is never so great as when it is chastised and subdued by the highest reason.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

480. “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

481. “Is there anything more tedious than the often repeated tales of the old and forgetful?”

— Charles Caleb Colton

482. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

484. “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

485. “The acquirements of science maybe termed the armor of the mind.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

486. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

488. “Be very slow to believe that you are wiser than all others; it is a fatal but common error.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

489. “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

490. “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

491. “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

492. “The learned languages are indispensable to form the gentleman and the scholar, and are well worth all the labor that they have cost us, provided they are valued not for themselves alone, which would make a pedant, but as a foundation for further acquirements.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

493. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

495. “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

496. “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

497. “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

498. “The good opinion of our fellow men is the strongest, though not the purest motive to virtue.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

500. “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