Top 500 Charles Caleb Colton Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 8 of 10

351. “Men’s arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

352. “Sensibility would be a good portress if she had but one hand; with her right she opens the door to pleasure, but with her left to pain.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

353. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

355. “God will excuse our prayers for ourselves whenever we are prevented from them by being occupied in such good works as to entitle us to the prayers of others.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

356. “If the prodigal quits life in debt to others, the miser quits it still deeper in debt to himself.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

357. “Calumny crosses oceans, scales mountains and traverses deserts, with greater ease than the Scythian Abaris, and like him, rides upon a poisoned arrow.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

358. “The hate which we all bear with the most Christian patience is the hate of those who envy us.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

359. “When I meet with any persons who write obscurely or converse confusedly, I am apt to suspect two things; first, that such persons do not understand themselves; and secondly, that they are not worthy of being understood by others.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

360. “Despotism can no more exist in a nation until the liberty of the press be destroyed than the night can happen before the sun is set.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

361. “Taking things not as they ought to be, but as they are, I fear it must be allowed that Macchiavelli will always have more disciples than Jesus.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

362. “That author, however, who has thought more than he has read, read more than he has written, and written more than he has published, if he does not command success, has at least deserved it.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

363. “The most consistent men are not more unlike to others, than they are at times to themselves.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

364. “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

365. “The head of dullness, unlike the tail of the torpedo, loses nothing of the benumbing and lethargizing influence by reiterated discharges.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

366. “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

367. “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

368. “Much too oft we make life gloomy – When happy we might be, If we gathered more of sunshine, And not dark shadows see.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

369. “The wisest man may be wiser to-day than he was yesterday, and to-morrow than he is to-day. Total freedom from change would imply total freedom from error; but this is the prerogative of Omniscience alone.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

371. “Mathematicians have sought knowledge in figures, Philosophers in systems, Logicians in subtleties, and Metaphysicians in sounds. It is not in any nor in all of these. He that studies only men, will get the body of knowledge without the soul, and he that studies only books, the soul without the body.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

372. “There were moments of despondency when Shakespeare thought himself no poet, and Raphael no painter; when the greatest wits have doubted the excellence of their happiest efforts.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

373. “No disorders have employed so many quacks, as those that have no cure; and no sciences have exercised so many quills, as those that have no certainty.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

374. “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

375. “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

376. “Time,- that black and narrow isthmus between two eternities.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

377. “The sceptic, when he plunges into the depths of infidelity, like the miser who leaps from the shipwreck, will find that the treasures which he bears about him will only sink him deeper in the abyss.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

378. “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

379. “Logic and metaphysics make use of more tools than all the rest of the sciences put together, and do the least work.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

380. “The acquirements of science may be termed the armour of the mind; but that armour would be worse than useless, that cost us all we had, and left us nothing to defend.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

381. “A house may draw visitors, but it is the possessor alone that can detain them.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

383. “Pleasure is to women what the sun is to the flower; if moderately enjoyed, it beautifies, it refreshes, and it improves; if immoderately, it withers, deteriorates and destroys.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

384. “When a man has displayed talent in some particular path, and left all competitors behind him in it, the world are too apt to give him credit for universality of genius, and to anticipate for him success in all that he undertakes.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

385. “It is adverse to talent to be consorted and trained up with inferior minds and inferior companions, however high they may rank. The foal of the racer neither finds out his speed nor calls out his powers if pastured out with the common herd, that are destined for the collar and the yoke.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

386. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

388. “The temple of truth is built indeed of stones of crystal, but, inasmuch as men have been concerned in rearing it, it has been consolidated by a cement composed of baser materials.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

389. “Philosophy is a bully that talks loud when the danger is at a distant; but, the moment she is pressed hard by an enemy, she is nowhere to be found and leaves the brunt of the battle to be fought by her steady, humble comrade, religion.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

390. “There are many women who have never intrigued, and many men who have never gamed; but those who have done either but once are very extraordinary animals.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

391. “Of all the passions, jealousy is that which exacts the hardest service, and pays the bitterest wages. Its service is to watch the success of one’s enemy; its wages to be sure of it.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

392. “To write what is worth publishing, to find honest people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it, are the three great difficulties in being an author.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

394. “There are many that despise half the world; but if there be any that despise the whole of it, it is because the other half despises them.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

395. “Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

396. “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

397. “Butler compared the tongues of these eternal talkers to race-horses, which go the faster the less weight they carry.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

398. “There are prating coxcombs in the world who would rather talk than listen, although Shakespeare himself were the orator, and human nature the theme!”

— Charles Caleb Colton

399. “You cannot separate charity and religion.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

400. “When all run by common consent into vice, none appear to do so.”

— Charles Caleb Colton