Top 500 Charles Caleb Colton Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “Envy ought to have no place allowed it in the hearts of people; for the goods of this present world are so vile and low that they are beneath it; and those of the future world are so vast and exalted that they are above it.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

202. “The wealth is ultimately just a relative thing. As a person with little money and little more needs to rich guys money but really wishes.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

203. “Brutes leave ingratitude to man.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

204. “Cheerfulness ought to be the viaticum vitae of their life to the old; age without cheerfulness is a Lapland winter without a sun.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

205. “Death is the only sovereign whom no partiality can warp, and no price corrupt.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

206. “With the offspring of genius, the law of parturition is reversed; the throes are in the conception, the pleasure in the birth.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

207. “To know a man, observe how he wins his object, rather than how he loses it; for when we fail, our pride supports us – when we succeed, it betrays us.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

208. “Never join with your friend when he abuses his horse or his wife, unless the one is about to be sold, the other to be buried.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

209. “We must be careful how we flatter fools too little, or wise men too much, for the flatterer must act the very reverse of the physician, and administer the strongest dose only to the weakest patient.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

210. “Wit in women is a jewel, which, unlike all others, borrows lustre from its setting, rather than bestows it; since nothing is so easy as to fancy a very beautiful woman extremely witty.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

211. “We often pretend to fear what we really despise, and more often despise what we really fear.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

212. “That an author’s work is the mirror of his mind is a position that has led to very false conclusions. If Satan himself were to write a book it would be in praise of virtue, because the good would purchase it for use, and the bad for ostentation.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

213. “When the air balloon was first discovered, some one flippantly asked Dr. Franklin what was the use of it. The doctor answered this question by asking another: “What is the use of a new-born infant? It may become a man.””

— Charles Caleb Colton

214. “Men of great and shining qualities do not always succeed in life, but the fault lies more often in themselves than in others.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

215. “Criticism is like champagne, nothing more execrable if bad, nothing more excellent if good; if meagre, muddy, vapid and sour, both are fit only to engender colic and wind; but if rich, generous and sparkling, they communicate a genial glow to the spirits, improve the taste, and expand the heart.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

216. “Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Featured in: Reading Quotes

217. “We should have all our communications with men, as in the presence of God; and with God, as in the presence of men.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

218. “The moral cement of all society is virtue; it unites and preserves, while vice separates and destroys.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

219. “Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

220. “Those who bequeath unto themselves a pompous funeral, are at just so much expense to inform the world of something that had much better be concealed; namely, that their vanity has survived themselves.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

221. “Love, like the cold bath, is never negative, it seldom leaves us where it finds us; if once we plunge into it, it will either heighten our virtues, or inflame our vices.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

222. “The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth; all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

223. “Hope is a prodigal young heir, and Experience is his banker; but his drafts are seldom honoured, since there is often a heavy balance against him, because he draws largely on a small capital, is not yet in possession, and if he were, would die.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

224. “It is better to have wisdom without learning than learning without wisdom.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

225. “There is but one pursuit in life which it is in the power of all to follow, and of all to attain. It is subject to no disappointments, since he that perseveres, makes every difficulty an advancement, and every contest a victory; and this is the pursuit of virtue.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

226. “He that knows himself, knows others; and he that is ignorant of himself, could not write a very profound lecture on other men’s heads.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

227. “In religion as in politics it so happens that we have less charity for those who believe half our creed, than for those who deny the whole of it.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

228. “The mob is a monster, with the hands of Briareus, but the head of Polyphemus, – strong to execute, but blind to perceive.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Featured in: Strong Quotes

229. “It may be observed of good writing, as of good blood, that it is much easier to say what it is composed of than to compose it.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

230. “Sincerely to aspire after virtue, is to gain her; and zealously to labour after her wages, is to receive them.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

231. “Mystery magnifies danger, as a fog the sun, the hand that warned Belshazzar derived its horrifying effect from the want of a body.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

232. “Gaming has been resorted to by the affluent as a refuge from ennui. It is a mental dram, and may succeed for a moment; but, like all other stimuli, it produces indirect debility.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

233. “Truth can hardly be expected to adapt herself to the crooked policy and wily sinuosities of worldly affairs; for truth, like light, travels only in straight lines.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

234. “Hannibal knew better how to conquer than how to profit by the conquest; and Napoleon was more skilful in taking positions than in maintaining them. As to reverses, no general cart presume to say that he may not be defeated; but he can, and ought to say, that he will not be surprised.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

235. “To be continually subject to the breath of slander, will tarnish the purest virtue, as a constant exposure to the atmosphere will obscure the brightness of the finest gold; but in either case, the real value of both continues the same, although the currency may be somewhat impeded.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

236. “Our actions must clothe us with an immortality loathsome or glorious.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

237. “Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow; but the misfortune is that in this particular case, the substance belongs to the shadow, the emptiness to its cause.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

238. “The excess of our youth are checks written against our age and they are payable with interest thirty years later.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

239. “If you cannot avoid a quarrel with a blackguard, let your lawyer manage it, rather than yourself. No man sweeps his own chimney, but employs a chimney-sweeper, who has no objection to dirty work, because it is his trade.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

240. “A thorough-paced antiquary not only remembers what all other people have thought proper to forget, but he also forgets what all other people think is proper to remember.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

241. “It is not until we have passed through the furnace that we are made to know how much dross there is in our composition.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

242. “The three great apostles of practical atheism, that make converts without persecuting, and retain them without preaching, are wealth, health and power.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

243. “There are three kinds of praise, that which we yield, that which we lend, and that which we pay. We yield it to the powerful from fear, we lend it to the weak from interest, and we pay it to the deserving from gratitude.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

244. “Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate, the nearer we arrive unto it.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

245. “We should choose our books as we would our companions, for their sterling and intrinsic merit.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

246. “Law and equity are two things which God has joined, but which man has put asunder.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

247. “Physical courage, which despises all danger, will make a man brave in one way; and moral courage, which despises all opinion, will make a man brave in another.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

248. “Revenge is a much more punctual paymaster than gratitude.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

249. “Courage is generosity of the highest order, for the brave are prodigal of the most precious things.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

250. “Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.”

— Charles Caleb Colton