Top 500 Charles Caleb Colton Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “The whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

302. “Pride is less ashamed of being ignorant, than of being instructed, and she looks too high to find that, which very often lies beneath her.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

303. “Women generally consider consequences in love, seldom in resentment.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

304. “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

305. “The interests of society often render it expedient not to utter the whole truth, the interests of science never: for in this field we have much more to fear from the deficiency of truth than from its abundance.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

306. “Were we as eloquent as angels we still would please people much more by listening rather than talking.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

307. “It is much easier to ruin a man of principle than a man of none, for he may be ruined through his scruples. Knavery is supple and can bend; but honesty is firm and upright, and yields not.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

308. “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

309. “Heaven may have happiness as utterly unknown to us as the gift of perfect vision would be to a man born blind. If we consider the inlets of pleasure from five senses only, we may be sure that the same Being who created us could have given us five hundred, if He had pleased.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

310. “If a cause be good, the most violent attack of its enemies will not injure it so much as an injudicious defence of it by its friends.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

311. “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

312. “If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

314. “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

315. “He that has cut the claws of the lion will not feel quite secure until he has also drawn his teeth.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

316. “A man who knows the world will not only make the most of everything he does know, but of many things he does not know, and will gain more credit by his adroit mode of hiding his ignorance than the pedant by his awkward attempt to exhibit his erudition.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

317. “There are too many who reverse both the principles and the practice of the Apostles; they become all things to all men, not to serve others, but themselves; and they try all things only to hold fast that which is bad.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

318. “The seat of perfect contentment is in the head; for every individual is thoroughly satisfied with his own proportion of brains.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

319. “Duke Chartres used to boast that no man could have less real value for character than himself, yet he would gladly give twenty thousand pounds for a good one, because he could immediately make double that sum by means of it.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

320. “Perhaps that is nearly the perfection of good writing which is original, but whose truth alone prevents the reader from suspecting that it is so; and which effects that for knowledge which the lens effects for the sunbeam, when it condenses its brightness in order to increase its force.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

321. “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

322. “It has been shrewdly said, that when, men abuse us we should suspect ourselves, and when they praise us, them. It is a rare instance of virtue to despise which censure which we do not deserve; and still more rare to despise praise which we do.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

323. “He that is good will infallibly become better, and he that is bad will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue, and time are three things that never stand still.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

324. “Mental pleasures never cloy; unlike those of the body, they are increased by reputation, approved by reflection, and strengthened by enjoyment.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

325. “Folly disgusts us less by her ignorance than pedantry by her learning.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

326. “The awkwardness and embarrassment which all feel on beginning to write, when they themselves are the theme, ought to serve as a hint to author’s that self is a subject they ought very rarely to descant upon.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

327. “It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

328. “Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness when bequeathed by those who, even alive, would part with nothing.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

329. “Most females will forgive a liberty rather than a slight.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

330. “Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

331. “Knavery is supple, and can bend, but honesty is firm and upright and yields not.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

332. “The enthusiast has been compared to a man walking in a fog; everything immediately around him, or in contact with him, appears sufficiently clear and luminous; but beyond the little circle of which he himself is the centre, all is mist and error and confusion.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

333. “Be very slow to believe that you are wiser than all others; it is a fatal but common error. Where one has been saved by a true estimation of another’s weakness, thousands have been destroyed by a false appreciation of their own strength.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

334. “Some reputed saints that have been canonized ought to have been cannonaded.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

335. “Genius in one grand particular is like life. We know nothing of either but by their effects.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

336. “An honest man will continue to be so though surrounded on all sides by rogues.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

337. “Total freedom from error is what none of us will allow to our neighbors; however we may be inclined to flirt a little with such spotless perfection ourselves.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

338. “Opinions, like showers, are generated in high places, but they invariably descend into lower ones, and ultimately flow down to the people as rain unto the sea.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

340. “Pity a thing often avowed, seldom felt; hatred is a thing often felt, seldom avowed.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

341. “Oppression cannot prosper where none will submit to be enslaved.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

342. “He that has never known adversity is but half acquainted with others, or with himself.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

343. “There are two way of establishing a reputation, one to be praised by honest people and the other to be accused by rogues. It is best, however, to secure the first one, because it will always be accompanied by the latter.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

344. “The press is the foe of rhetoric, but the friend of reason.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

345. “Neutrality is no favorite with Providence, for we are so formed that it is scarcely possible for us to stand neuter in our hearts, although we may deem it prudent to appear so in our actions.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

346. “Let us not be too prodigal when we are young, nor too parsimonious when we are old. Otherwise we shall fall into the common error of those, who, when they had the power to enjoy, had not the prudence to acquire; and when they had the prudence to acquire, had no longer the power to enjoy.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

347. “Philosophy is a goddess, whose head indeed is in heaven, but whose feet are upon earth; she attempts more than she accomplishes, and promises more than she performs.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

348. “Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

349. “With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid, than which to choose, for good books are as scarce as good companions, and in both instances, all that we can learn from baad ones is, that some much time has been worse than thrown away.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

350. “Genius, in one respect, is like gold; numbers of persons are constantly writing about both, who have neither.”

— Charles Caleb Colton