Top 500 Charles Caleb Colton Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “True goodness is not without that germ of greatness that can bear with patience the mistakes of the ignorant.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

252. “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

253. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

255. “Pedantry prides herself on being wrong by rules; while common sense is contented to be right without them.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

257. “Most men know what they hate, few what they love.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

258. “Any one can give advice, such as it is, but only a wise man knows how to profit by it.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

263. “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

264. “It is easier to pretend to be what you are not than to hide what you really are; but he that can accomplish both has little to learn in hypocrisy.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

265. “We injure mysteries, which are matters of faith, by any attempt at explanation in order to make them matters of reason. Could they be explained, they would cease to be mysteries; and it has been well said that a thing is not necessarily against reason because it happens to be above it.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

267. “Love is an alliance of friendship and animalism; if the former predominates it is passion exalted and refined; if the latter, gross and sensual.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

268. “An Irish man fights before he reasons, a Scotchman reasons before he fights, an Englishman is not particular as to the order of precedence, but will do either to accommodate his customers.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

269. “Women who are the least bashful are not unfrequently the most modest; and we are never more deceived than when we would infer any laxity of principle from that freedom of demeanor which often arises from a total ignorance of vice.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

270. “Worldly wisdom dictates to her disciples the propriety of dressing somewhat beyond their means, but of living somewhat within them.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

271. “Avarice begets more vices than Priam did children and like Priam survives them all. It starves its keeper to surfeit those who wish him dead, and makes him submit to more mortifications to lose heaven than the martyr undergoes to gain it.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

272. “There is this of good in real evils; they deliver us, while they last, from the petty despotism of all that were imaginary.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

273. “In death itself there can be nothing terrible, for the act of death annihilates sensation; but there are many roads to death, and some of them justly formidable, even to the bravest.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

274. “Women do not transgress the bounds of decorum so often as men; but when they do, they go greater lengths.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

275. “It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

276. “Unity of opinion is indeed a glorious and desirable thing, and its circle cannot be too strong and extended, if the centre be truth; but if the centre be error, the greater the circumference, the greater the evil.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Featured in: Strong Quotes

277. “Vanity finds in self-love so powerful an ally that it storms, as it were, by a coup de main,, the citadel of our heads, where, having blinded the two watchmen, it readily descends into the heart.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

278. “When millions applaud you seriously ask yourself what harm you have done; and when they disapprove you, what good.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

279. “Whenever we find ourselves more inclined to persecute than to persuade, we may then be certain that our zeal has more of pride in it than of charity.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

280. “He that will only believe what he can fully comprehend must either have a very long head, or a very short creed.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

281. “The excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

282. “Secrecy of design, when combined with rapidity of execution, like me column that guided Israel in the deserts, becomes the guardian pillar of light and fire to our friends, a cloud of overwhelming and impenetrable darkness to our enemies.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

283. “Strong as our passions are, they may be starved into submission, and conquered without being killed.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Featured in: Strong Quotes

284. “The worst thing that can be said of the most powerful is that they can take your life; but the same can be said of the most weak.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

285. “Revenge is a debt, in the paying of which the greatest knave is honest and sincere, and, so far as he is able, punctual.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

286. “He that swells in prosperity will be sure to shrink in adversity.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

287. “Sleep, the type of death, is also, like that which it typifies, restricted to the earth. It flies from hell and is excluded from heaven.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

288. “The science of legislation is like that of medicine in one respect: that it is far more easy to point out what will do harm than what will do good.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

289. “Villainy that is vigilant will be an overmatch for virtue, if she slumber at her post.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

290. “He that places himself neither higher nor lower than he ought to do exercises the truest humility.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

291. “The young fancy that their follies are mistaken by the old for happiness. The old fancy that their gravity is mistaken by the young for wisdom.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

292. “Contemporaries appreciate the person rather than their merit, posterity will regard the merit rather than the person.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

293. “Falsehood is often rocked by truth, but she soon outgrows her cradle and discards her nurse.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

294. “If a horse has four legs, and I’m riding it, I think I can win.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

295. “The gamester, if he die a martyr to his profession, is doubly ruined. He adds his soul to every other loss, and by the act of suicide, renounces earth to forfeit Heaven.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

296. “For one man who sincerely pities our misfortunes, there are a thousand who sincerely hate our success.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

297. “Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

298. “Criticism is like champagne, nothing more execrable if bad, nothing more excellent if good.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

299. “Public charities and benevolent associations for the gratuitous relief of every species of distress, are peculiar to Christianity; no other system of civil or religious policy has originated them; they form its highest praise and characteristic feature.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

300. “The greatest and most amiable privilege which the rich enjoy over the poor is that which they exercise the least – the privilege of making others happy.”

— Charles Caleb Colton