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

402. “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

403. “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

404. “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

405. “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

406. “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

407. “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

408. “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

409. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

412. “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

413. “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

414. “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

415. “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

416. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

421. “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

422. “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

423. “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

424. “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

425. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

428. “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

429. “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

430. “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

431. “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

432. “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

433. “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

434. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

436. “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

437. “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

438. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

441. “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

442. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

445. “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

446. “You cannot separate charity and religion.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

448. “In the pursuit of knowledge, follow it wherever it is to be found; like fern, it is the produce of all climates, and like coin, its circulation is not restricted to any particular class.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

449. “A lady of fashion will sooner excuse a freedom flowing from admiration than a slight resulting from indifference.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

450. “Purity lives and derives its life solely from the Spirit of God.”

— Charles Caleb Colton