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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

403. “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

404. “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

405. “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

406. “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

407. “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

408. “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

409. “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

410. “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

411. “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

412. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

414. “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

415. “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

416. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

418. “For all the practical purposes of life, truth might as well be in a prison as in the folio of a schoolman; and those who release her from her cobwebbed shelf and teach her to live with men have the merit of liberating, if not of discovering, her.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

419. “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

420. “My lowest days as a Christian have been more fulfilling and rewarding than all the days of glory in the White House.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

421. “Fashions smile has given wit to dullness and grace to deformity, and has brought everything into vogue, by turns, but virtue.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

422. “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

423. “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

424. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

429. “To be satisfied with the acquittal of the world, though accompanied with the secret condemnation of conscience, this is the mark of a little mind; but it requires a soul of no common stamp to be satisfied with its own acquittal, and to despise the condemnation of the world.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

430. “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

431. “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

432. “The French have a saying that whatever excellence a man may exhibit in a public station he is very apt to be ridiculous in a private one.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

433. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

436. “Custom looks to things that are past, and fashion to things that are present, but both of them are somewhat purblind as to things that are to come.”

— 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 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

439. “False reasoners are often best confuted by giving them the full swing of their own absurdities.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

440. “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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

442. “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

443. “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

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

— 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

Featured in: Reading Quotes

446. “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

447. “Criticism discloses that which it would fain conceal, but conceals that which it professes to disclose; it is therefore, read by the discerning, not to discover the merits of an author, but the motives of his critic.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

448. “There are two metals, one of which is omnipotent in the cabinet, and the other in the camp – gold and iron. He that knows how to apply them both may indeed attain the highest station.”

— 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. “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