Top 500 Charles Caleb Colton Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “Jealousy is sustained as often by pride as by affection.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

252. “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

253. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

255. “We often regret we did not do otherwise, when that very otherwise would, in all probability, have done for us.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

256. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

259. “He that can enjoy the intimacy of the great, and on no occasion disgust them by familiarity, or disgrace himself by servility, proves that he is as perfect a gentleman by nature as his companions are by rank.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

260. “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

261. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

265. “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

266. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

268. “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

269. “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

270. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

274. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

278. “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

279. “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

280. “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

281. “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

282. “Words are in this respect like water, that they often take their taste, flavour, and character, from the mouth out of which they proceed, as the water from the channel through which it flows.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

284. “When we are in the company of sensible men, we ought to be doubly cautious of talking too much, lest we lose two good things, their good opinion and our own improvement; for what we have to say we know, but what they have to say we know not.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

285. “The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

286. “The whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

287. “The Grecian’s maxim would indeed be a sweeping clause in Literature; it would reduce many a giant to a pygmy; many a speech to a sentence; and many a folio to a primer.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

288. “We devote the activity of our youth to revelry and the decrepitude of our old age to repentance: and we finish the farce by bequeathing our dead bodies to the chancel, which when living, we interdicted from the church.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

289. “God is as great in minuteness as He is in magnitude.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

290. “Secrecy is the soul of all great designs. Perhaps more has been effected by concealing our own intentions than by discovering those of our enemy.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

291. “An act by which we make one friend and one enemy is a losing game; because revenge is a much stronger principle than gratitude.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

292. “That which we acquire with the most difficulty we retain the longest; as those who have earned a fortune are usually more careful of it than those who have inherited one.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

294. “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

295. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Featured in: Strong Quotes

297. “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

298. “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

299. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton