Top 500 Charles Caleb Colton Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “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

402. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

404. “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

405. “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

406. “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

407. “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

408. “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

409. “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

410. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

412. “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

413. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

417. “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

418. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

420. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

424. “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

425. “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

426. “If a cause be good, the most violent attack of its enemies will not injure it so much as an injudicious defence of it by its friends.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

428. “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

429. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

431. “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

432. “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

433. “In cases of doubtful morality, it is usual to say is there any harm in doing this? This question may sometimes be best answered by asking ourselves another; is there any harm in letting it alone?”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

435. “Literature has her quacks no less than medicine, and they are divided into two classes; those who have erudition without genius, and those who have volubility without depth; we shall get second-hand sense from the one, and original nonsense from the other.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

436. “It is easier to pretend to be what you are not than to hide what you really are; but he that can accomplish both has little to learn in hypocrisy.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

438. “There is this paradox in fear: he is most likely to inspire it in others who has none himself!”

— Charles Caleb Colton

439. “If we trace the history of most revolutions, we shall find that the first inroads upon the laws have been made by the governors, as often as by the governed.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

440. “That is fine benevolence, finely executed, which, like the Nile, comes from hidden sources.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

441. “Some indeed there are who profess to despise all flattery, but even these are nevertheless to be flattered, by being told that they do despise it.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

442. “In all societies, it is advisable to associate if possible with the highest; not that the highest are always the best, but because, if disgusted there, we can descend at any time; but if we begin with the lowest, to ascend is impossible.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

443. “Where we cannot invent, we may at least improve.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

444. “In great cities men are more callous both to the happiness and the misery of others, than in the country; for they are constantly in the habit of seeing both extremes.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

445. “Some read to think, these are rare; some to write, these are common; and some read to talk, and these form the great majority.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

446. “Anger is practical awkwardness.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

447. “There are both dull correctness and piquant carelessness; it is needless to say which will command the most readers and have the most influence.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

448. “Evils in the journey of life are like the hills which alarm travelers upon their road; they both appear great at a distance, but when we approach them we find that they are far less insurmountable than we had conceived.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

449. “If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself; all that runs over will be yours.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

450. “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