Top 500 Charles Caleb Colton Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

303. “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

304. “Happiness is that single and glorious thing which is the very light and sun of the whole animated universe; and where she is not it were better that nothing should be.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

305. “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

306. “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

307. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

310. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

312. “When in reading we meet with any maxim that may be of use, we should take it for our own, and make an immediate application of it, as we would of the advice of a friend whom we have purposely consulted.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

314. “Doubt is the vestibule of faith.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

316. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

318. “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

319. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

321. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

325. “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

326. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

330. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

332. “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

333. “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

334. “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

335. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

338. “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

339. “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

340. “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

341. “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

342. “Make no enemies; he is insignificant indeed that can do thee no harm.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

343. “Professors in every branch of the sciences, prefer their own theories to truth: the reason is that their theories are private property, but truth is common stock.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

344. “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

345. “By paying our other debts, we are equal with all mankind; but in refusing to pay a debt of revenge, we are superior.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

346. “We may anticipate bliss, but who ever drank of that enchanted cup unalloved?”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

348. “The praise of the envious is far less creditable than their censure; they praise only that which they can surpass, but that which surpasses them they censure.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

349. “Style is indeed the valet of genius, and an able one too; but as the true gentleman will appear, even in rags, so true genius will shine, even through the coarsest style.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

350. “Precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity as to those mysterious powers assumed by others.”

— Charles Caleb Colton