Top 500 Charles Caleb Colton Quotes (2025 Update)
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451. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

453. “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

454. “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

455. “Anger is practical awkwardness.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

456. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

458. “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

459. “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

460. “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

461. “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

462. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

464. “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

465. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

467. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

472. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

474. “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

475. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

478. “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

479. “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

480. “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

481. “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

482. “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

483. “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

484. “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

485. “There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise. There is one signal instance on record where this kind of prejudice was overcome by a miracle; but the age of miracles is past, while that of prejudice remains.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

486. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

489. “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

490. “Error, when she retraces her steps, has farther to go before she can arrive at truth than ignorance.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

491. “Physicians must discover the weaknesses of the human mind, and even condescend to humor them, or they will never be called in to cure the infirmities of the body.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

492. “If martyrdom is now on the decline, it is not because martyrs are less zealous, but because martyr-mongers are more wise. The light of intellect has put out the fire of persecution, as other fires are observed to smoulder before the light of the same.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

493. “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

494. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

496. “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

497. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

499. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton