Top 500 Charles Caleb Colton Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “The next thing to having wisdom ourselves, is to profit by that of others.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

452. “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

453. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

455. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

457. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

460. “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

461. “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

462. “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

463. “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

464. “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

465. “It is with nations as with individuals, those who know the least of others think the highest of themselves; for the whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

468. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

470. “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

471. “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

472. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

474. “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

475. “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

476. “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

477. “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

478. “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

479. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

481. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

483. “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

484. “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

485. “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

486. “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

487. “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

488. “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

489. “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

490. “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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491. “Anger is practical awkwardness.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

492. “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

493. “Sometimes the greatest adversities turn out to be the greatest blessings.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

494. “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

495. “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

496. “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

497. “Subtract from many modern poets all that may be found in Shakespeare, and trash will remain.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

498. “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

499. “The integrity that lives only on opinion would starve without it.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

500. “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