Top 500 Charles Caleb Colton Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Revenge is fever in our own blood, to be cured only by letting the blood of another; but the remedy too often produces a relapse, which is remorse – a malady far more dreadful than the first disease, because it is incurable.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

52. “Be real and adjust you strategy according to honest results.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

53. “When you have nothing to say, say nothing; a weak defense strengthens your opponent, and silence is less injurious than a bad reply.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

54. “If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; if you would know, and not be known, live in a city.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

55. “True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

56. “So blinded are we by our passions, that we suffer more to be damned than to be saved.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

57. “Eloquence is the language of nature, and cannot be learned in the schools; but rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least will most excel in.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

58. “Self-denial is often the sacrifice of one sort of self-love for another.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

59. “Man, if he compare himself with all that he can see, is at the zenith of power; but if he compare himself with all that he can conceive, he is at the nadir of weakness.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

60. “Hope is a prodigal young heir, and experience is his banker.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

61. “Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

62. “Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

63. “That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

64. “Adroit observers will find that some who affect to dislike flattery, may yet be flattered indirectly, by a well seasoned abuse and ridicule of their rivals.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

65. “Where true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a pretext for a thousand.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

66. “If Satan ever laughs, it must be at hypocrites; they are the greatest dupes he has.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

67. “It is always safe to learn, even from our enemies; seldom safe to venture to instruct, even our friends.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

68. “The man of pleasure, by a vain attempt to be more happy than any man can be, is often more miserable than most men are.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

69. “Sturdy beggars can bear stout denials.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

70. “By privileges, immunities, or prerogatives to give unlimited swing to the passions of individuals, and then to hope that they will restrain them, is about as reasonable as to expect that the tiger will spare the hart to browse upon the herbage.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

71. “The upright, if he suffer calumny to move him, fears the tongue of man more than the eye of God.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

72. “Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

73. “Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

74. “Men spend their lives in anticipations, – in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other – it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future have not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

75. “There can be no Christianity where there is no charity.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

76. “We are more inclined to hate one another for points on which we differ, than to love one another for points on which we agree.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

77. “Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

78. “Envy is the coward side of Hate, And all her ways are bleak and desolate.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

79. “Life often presents us with a choice of evils, rather than of goods.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

80. “That extremes beget extremes is an apothegm built on the most profound observation of the human mind.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

81. “The inheritance of a distinguished and noble name is a proud inheritance to him who lives worthily of it.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

82. “Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

83. “We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine, but if defer tasting them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

84. “Falsehood is never so successful as when she baits her hook with truth, and no opinions so fatally mislead us as those that are not wholly wrong, as no watches so effectively deceive the wearer as those that are sometimes right.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

85. “The smiling daughter of the storm.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

86. “Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

87. “It is with disease of the mind, as with those of the body; we are half dead before we understand our disorder, and half cured when we do.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

88. “Knowledge is two-fold, and consists not only in an affirmation of what is true, but in the negation of that which is false.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

89. “The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

90. “Habit will reconcile us to everything but change.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

91. “Mystery magnifies danger as the fog the sun.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

92. “The poorest man would not part with health for money, but the richest would gladly part with all their money for health.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

93. “The two most precious things this side of the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

94. “Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

95. “The most zealous converters are always the most rancorous when they fail of producing conversion.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

96. “No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us. Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with our all to keep it.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

97. “Grant graciously what you cannot refuse safely and conciliate those you cannot conquer.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

98. “Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

99. “Time is the measurer of all things, but is itself immeasurable, and the grand discloser of all things, but is itself undisclosed.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

100. “Injuries accompanied with insults are never forgiven: all men, on these occasions, are good haters, and lay out their revenge at compound interest.”

— Charles Caleb Colton