Top 500 Charles Caleb Colton Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

303. “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

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. “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

306. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

309. “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

310. “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

311. “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

312. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

315. “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

316. “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

317. “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

318. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

320. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

322. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

324. “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

325. “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

326. “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

327. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

330. “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

331. “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

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. “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

334. “Doubt is the vestibule of faith.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

335. “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

336. “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

337. “As there are none so weak that we may venture to injure them with impunity, so there are none so low that they may not at some time be able to repay an obligation. Therefore, what benevolence would dictate, prudence would confirm.”

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

340. “A beautiful woman, if poor, should use double circumspection; for her beauty will tempt others, her poverty herself.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

341. “That profound firmness which enabler a man to regard difficulties but as evils to be surmounted, no matter what shape they may assume.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

342. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

345. “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

346. “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

347. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

350. “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