Top 500 Charles Caleb Colton Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “The family is the most basic unit of government. As the first community to which a person is attached and the first authority under which a person learns to live, the family establishes society’s most basic values.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

102. “Power, like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer; it dignifies meanness; it magnifies littleness; to what is contemptible, it gives authority; to what is low, exaltation.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

103. “Courage is like the diamond, – very brilliant; not changed by fire, capable of high polish, but except for the purpose of cutting hard bodies useless.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

104. “He who studies books alone will know how things ought to be, and he who studies men will know how they are.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

105. “Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

106. “In most quarrels there is a fault on both sides. A quarrel may be compared to a spark, which cannot be produced without a flint, as well as steel. Either of them may hammer on wood forever; no fire will follow.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

107. “Our minds are as different as our faces. We are all traveling to one destination: happiness, but few are going by the same road.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

108. “If rich, it is easy enough to conceal our wealth; but, if poor, it is not quite so easy to conceal our poverty. We shall find that it is less difficult to hide a thousand guineas, than one hole in our coat.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

109. “To judge by the event is an error all commit: for in every instance courage, if crowned with success, is heroism; if clouded by defeat, temerity. When Nelson fought his battle in the Sound, it was the result alone that decided whether he was to kiss a hand at court or a rod at a court-martial.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

110. “Death is like thunder in two particulars; we are alarmed, at the sound of it; and it is formidable only from that which preceded it.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

111. “Peace is the evening star of the soul, as virtue is its sun, and the two are never far apart.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

112. “We ask advice but we mean approbation.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

113. “It is a mistake, that a lust for power is the mark of a great mind; for even the weakest have been captivated by it; and for minds of the highest order, it has no charms.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

114. “I have somewhere seen it observed that we should make the same use of a book that the bee does of a flower: she steals sweets from it, but does not injure it.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

115. “Friendship, of itself a holy tie, is made more sacred by adversity.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

116. “A youth without fire is followed by an old age without experience.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

117. “None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them; such persons covet secrets as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

118. “Diffidence is the better part of knowledge.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

119. “He who knows himself knows others.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

120. “There are some frauds so well conducted that it would be stupidity not to be deceived by them.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

121. “Honor is unstable and seldom the same; for she feeds upon opinion, and is as fickle as her food.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

122. “A high degree of intellectual refinement in the female is the surest pledge society can have for the improvement of the male.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

123. “Insults are engendered from vulgar minds, like toadstools from a dunghill.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

124. “Pride, like the magnet, constantly points to one object, self; but, unlike the magnet, it has no attractive pole, but at all points repels.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

125. “We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves; it is civil war.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

126. “The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

127. “Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

128. “For what are the triumphs of war, planned by ambition, executed by violence, and consummated by devastation? The means are the sacrifice of many, the end, the bloated aggrandizement of the few.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

129. “Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

130. “Constant success shows us but one side of the world; adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

131. “The victim to too severe a law is considered as a martyr rather than a criminal.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

132. “Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

133. “No metaphysician ever felt the deficiency of language so much as the grateful.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

134. “Custom is the law of one description of fools, and fashion of another; but the two parties often clash – for precedent is the legislator of the first, and novelty of the last. Custom, therefore, looks to things that are past, and fashion to things that are present.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

135. “We should have a glorious conflagration, if all who cannot put fire into their works would only consent to put their works into the fire.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

136. “Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us – never cease to instruct – never cloy.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

137. “He that has never suffered extreme adversity knows not the full extent of his own depravation.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

138. “The sun should not set upon our anger, neither should he rise upon our confidence. We should forgive freely, but forget rarely. I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

139. “None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

140. “All adverse and depressing influences can be overcome, not by fighting, by by rising above them.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

141. “War is a game in which princes seldom win, the people never.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

142. “Fortune has been considered the guardian divinity of fools; and, on this score, she has been accused of blindness; but it should rather be adduced as a proof of her sagacity, when she helps those who cannot help themselves.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

143. “It is the briefest yet wisest maxim which tells us to meddle not.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

144. “That is true beauty which has not only a substance, but a spirit; a beauty that we must intimately know, justly to appreciate.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

145. “Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

146. “We own almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

147. “As that gallant can best affect a pretended passion for one woman who has no true love for another, so he that has no real esteem for any of the virtues can best assume the appearance of them all.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

148. “Where we cannot invent, we may at least improve; we may give somewhat of novelty to that which was old, condensation to that which was diffuse, perspicuity to that which was obscure, and currency to that which was recondite.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

149. “Gaming is the child of avarice, but the parent of prodigality.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

150. “A power above all human responsibility ought to be above all human attainment.”

— Charles Caleb Colton