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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

353. “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

354. “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

355. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

358. “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

359. “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

360. “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

361. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

364. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

367. “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

368. “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

369. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

371. “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

372. “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

373. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

375. “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

376. “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

377. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

380. “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

381. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

383. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

385. “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

386. “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

387. “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

388. “By paying our other debts, we are equal with all mankind; but in refusing to pay a debt of revenge, we are superior.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

390. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

392. “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

393. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

397. “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

398. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

400. “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