Top 500 Charles Caleb Colton Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 10 of 10

451. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

453. “The avarice of the miser may be termed the grand sepulchral of all his other passions, as they successively decay.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

454. “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

455. “Theories are private property, but truth is common stock.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

457. “Butler compared the tongues of these eternal talkers to race-horses, which go the faster the less weight they carry.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

458. “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

459. “You cannot separate charity and religion.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

460. “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

461. “Ennui has made more gamblers than avarice.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

462. “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

463. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

466. “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

467. “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

468. “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

469. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

473. “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

474. “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

475. “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

476. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

478. “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

479. “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

480. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

482. “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

483. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

486. “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

487. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

489. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

491. “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

492. “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

493. “Too high an appreciation of our own talents is the chief cause why experience preaches to us all in vain.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

494. “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

495. “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

496. “Many speak the truth when they say that they despise riches, but they mean the riches possessed by others.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

497. “Anger is practical awkwardness.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

498. “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

499. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton