Top 500 Charles Caleb Colton Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “Make no enemies; he is insignificant indeed that can do thee no harm.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

353. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

356. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

358. “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

359. “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

360. “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

361. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

365. “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

366. “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

367. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

370. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

372. “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

373. “Light, whether it be material or moral, is the best reformer; for it prevents those disorders which other remedies sometimes cure, but sometimes confirm.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

374. “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

375. “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

376. “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

377. “Antithesis may be the blossom of wit, but it will never arrive at maturity unless sound sense be the trunk and truth the root.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

378. “I have found by experience that they who have spent all their lives in cities, improve their talents but impair their virtues; and strengthen their minds but weaken their morals.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

379. “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

380. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

382. “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

383. “When we feel a strong desire to thrust our advice upon others, it is usually because we suspect their weakness; but we ought rather to suspect our own.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Featured in: Strong Quotes

384. “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

385. “That cowardice is incorrigible which the love of power cannot overcome.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

386. “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

387. “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

388. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

390. “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

391. “Falsehood is often rocked by truth, but she soon outgrows her cradle and discards her nurse.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

392. “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

393. “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

394. “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

395. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

397. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

399. “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

400. “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