Top 500 Charles Caleb Colton Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “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

402. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

404. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

406. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

408. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

410. “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

411. “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

412. “Theory is worth but little, unless it can explain its own phenomena, and it must effect this without contradicting itself; therefore, the facts are sometimes assimilated to the theory, rather than the theory to the facts.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

413. “The avarice of the miser may be termed the grand sepulchral of all his other passions, as they successively decay.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

414. “Pride requires very costly food-its keeper’s happiness.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

415. “It is a mortifying truth, and ought to teach the wisest of us humility, that many of the most valuable discoveries have been the result of chance rather than of contemplation, and of accident rather than of design.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

416. “Five thousand years have added no improvement to the hive of the bee, nor to the house of the beaver; but look at the habitations and the achievements of men!”

— Charles Caleb Colton

417. “Theories are private property, but truth is common stock.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

418. “We should not be too niggardly in our praise, for men will do more to support a character than to raise one.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

419. “You cannot separate charity and religion.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

420. “No propagation or multiplication is more rapid that that of evil, unless it be checked; no growth more certain.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

422. “Ennui has made more gamblers than avarice.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

423. “Sir Richard Steele has observed, that there is this difference between the Church of Rome and the Church of England: the one professes to be infallible, the other to be never in the wrong.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

424. “We shall at all times chance upon men of recondite acquirements, but whose qualifications, from the incommunicative and inactive habits of their owners, are as utterly useless to others as though the possessors had them not.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

425. “The reason why great men meet with so little pity or attachment in adversity, would seem to be this: the friends of a great man were made by his fortune, his enemies by himself, and revenge is a much more punctual paymaster than gratitude.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

426. “That theatrical kind of virtue, which requires publicity for its stage, and an applauding world for its audience, could not be depended on, in the secrecy of solitude, or the retirement of a desert.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

427. “If our eloquence be directed above the heads of our hearers, we shall do no execution. By pointing our arguments low, we stand a chance of hitting their hearts as well as their heads. In addressing angels, we could hardly raise our eloquence too high; but we must remember that men are not angels.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

428. “It is far more easy to acquire a fortune like a knave, than to expend it, like a gentleman.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

429. “It is more easy to forgive the weak who have injured us than the powerful whom we have injured.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

430. “If all seconds were as averse to duels as their principals, very little blood would be shed in that way.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

431. “A wise man may be duped as well as a fool; but the fool publishes the triumph of the deceiver.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

432. “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

433. “To admit that there is any such thing as chance, in the common acceptation of the term, would be to attempt to establish a power independent of God.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

434. “Dreams ought to produce no conviction whatever on philosophical minds. If we consider how many dreams are dreamt every night, and how many events occur every day, we shall no longer wonder at those accidental coincidences which ignorance mistakes for verifications.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

435. “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

436. “The consequences of things are not always proportionate to the apparent magnitude of those events that have produced them. Thus the American Revolution, from which little was expected, produced much; but the French Revolution, from which much was expected, produced little.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

438. “Many books owe their success to the good memories of their authors and the bad memories of their readers.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

439. “It is a common observation that any fool can get money; but they are not wise that think so.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

440. “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

441. “Some men are very entertaining for a first interview, but after that they are exhausted, and run out; on a second meeting we shall find them flat and monotonous; like hand-organs, we have heard all their tunes.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

442. “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

443. “Shakespeare, Butler and Bacon have rendered it extremely difficult for all who come after them to be sublime, witty or profound.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

444. “Words indeed are but the signs and counters of knowledge, and their currency should be strictly regulated by the capital which they represent.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

445. “Eloquence, to produce her full effect, should start from the head of the orator, as Pallas from the brain of Jove, completely armed and equipped. Diffidence, therefore, which is so able a mentor to the writer, would prove a dangerous counsellor for the orator.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

446. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

448. “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

449. “The cynic who twitted Aristippus by observing that the philosopher who could dine on herbs might despise the company of a king, was well replied to by Aristippus, when he remarked that the philosopher who could enjoy the company or a king might also despise a dinner of herbs.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

450. “War kills men, and men deplore the loss; but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies.”

— Charles Caleb Colton