Top 500 Charles Caleb Colton Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “Genius, in one respect, is like gold; numbers of persons are constantly writing about both, who have neither.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

302. “In science, reason is the guide; in poetry, taste. The object of the one is truth, which is uniform and indivisible; the object of the other is beauty, which is multiform and varied.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

303. “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

304. “He that abuses his own profession will not patiently bear with any one else who does so. And this is one of our most subtle operations of self-love. For when we abuse our own profession, we tacitly except ourselves; but when another abuses it, we are far from being certain that this is the case.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

305. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

308. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

310. “Princes rule the people, and their own passions rule Princes; but Providence can over-rule the whole, and draw the instruments of his inscrutable purposes from the vices, no less than the virtues of Kings.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

311. “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

312. “In life we shall find many men that are great, and some that are good, but very few men that are both great and good.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

314. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

316. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

318. “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

319. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

323. “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

324. “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

325. “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

326. “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

327. “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

328. “Doubt is the vestibule of faith.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

329. “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

330. “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

331. “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

332. “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

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333. “As the gout seems privileged to attack the bodies of the wealthy, so ennui seems to exert a similar prerogative over their minds.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

334. “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

335. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

338. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

340. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— 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. “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

346. “It is not so difficult a task to plant new truths, as to root out old errors; for there is this paradox in men, they run after that which is new, but are prejudiced in favor of that which is old.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

347. “Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

349. “In cases of doubtful morality, it is usual to say is there any harm in doing this? This question may sometimes be best answered by asking ourselves another; is there any harm in letting it alone?”

— Charles Caleb Colton

350. “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