Top 500 Charles Caleb Colton Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “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

352. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

355. “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

356. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

358. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

360. “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

361. “He that can please nobody is not so much to be pitied as he that nobody can please.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

362. “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

363. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

365. “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

366. “Secrecy is the soul of all great designs.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

367. “It is far better to borrow experience than to buy it.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

368. “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

369. “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

370. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

372. “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

373. “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

374. “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

375. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

377. “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

378. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

380. “Subtlety will sometimes give safety, no less than strength; and minuteness has sometimes escaped, where magnitude would have been crushed. The little animal that kills the boa is formidable chiefly from its insignificance, which is incompressible by the folds of its antagonist.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

381. “Nothing is more durable than the dynasty of Doubt; for he reigns in the hearts of all his people, but gives satisfaction to none of them, and yet he is the only despot who can never die, while any of his subjects live.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

382. “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

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. “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

385. “It is good to act as if. It is even better to grow to the point where it is no longer an act.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

387. “Shining outward qualities, although they may excite first-rate expectations, are not unusually found to be the companions of second-rate abilities.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

388. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

390. “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

391. “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

392. “Observation made in the cloister or in the desert will generally be as obscure as the one and as barren as the other; but he that would paint with his pencil must study originals, and not be over-fearful of a little dust.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

394. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

396. “Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent; for wealth, although it be a far less efficient source of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

397. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

399. “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

400. “The further we advance in knowledge, the more simplicity shall we discover in those primary rules that regulate all the apparently endless, complicated, and multiform operations of the Godhead.”

— Charles Caleb Colton