Top 500 Charles Caleb Colton Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “Drunkenness is the vice of a good constitution or of a bad memory of a constitution so treacherously good that it never bends till it breaks; or of a memory that recollects the pleasures of getting intoxicated, but forgets the pains of getting sober.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

203. “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

204. “Logic is a large drawer, containing some useful instruments, and many more that are superfluous. A wise man will look into it for two purposes, to avail himself of those instruments that are really useful, and to admire the ingenuity with which those that are not so, are assorted and arranged.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

205. “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

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. “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

209. “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

210. “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

211. “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

212. “Brutes leave ingratitude to man.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

213. “To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it: the pains of power are real, its pleasures imaginary.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

214. “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

215. “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

216. “Some are cursed with the fullness of satiety; and how can they bear the ills of life when its very pleasures fatigue them?”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

218. “Where thou perceivest knowledge, bend the ear of attention and respect; But yield not further to the teaching, than as thy mind is warranted by reasons. Better is an obstinant disputant, that yieldeth inch by inch, Than the shallow traitor to himself, who surrendereth to half an argument.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

219. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

221. “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

222. “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

223. “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

224. “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

225. “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

226. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

228. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

230. “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

231. “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

232. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

235. “He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool; since the most absurd doctrines are not without such evidence as martyrdom can produce. A martyr, therefore, by the mere act of suffering, can prove nothing but his own faith.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

236. “In civil jurisprudence it too often happens that there is so much law, that there is no room for justice, and that the claimant expires of wrong in the midst of right, as mariners die of thirst in the midst of water.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

237. “True goodness is not without that germ of greatness that can bear with patience the mistakes of the ignorant.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

239. “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

240. “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

241. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

243. “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

244. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

247. “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

248. “There are three modes of bearing the ills of life, by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

249. “The greatest miracle that the Almighty could perform would be to make a bad man happy, even in heaven; he must unparadise that blessed place to accomplish it. In its primary signification, all vice – that is, all excess – brings its own punishment even here.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

250. “Jealousy is sustained as often by pride as by affection.”

— Charles Caleb Colton