Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

Immitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy! In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age we are looking backward to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day when we have time.

No company is preferable to bad. We are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.

The excess of our youth are checks written against our age and they are payable with interest thirty years later.

Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.

To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.

Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and hell a fable.

Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.

Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.

We hate some persons because we do not know them; and will not know them because we hate them.

Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.

A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition.

He that is good, will infallibly become better, and he that is bad, will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue and time are three things that never stand still.

It is better to meet danger than to wait for it. He that is on a lee shore, and foresees a hurricane, stands out to sea and encounters a storm to avoid a shipwreck.

Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride.

Time, the cradle of hope.... Wisdom walks before it, opportunity with it, and repentance behind it: he that has made it his friend will have little to fear from his enemies, but he that has made it his enemy will have little to hope from his friends.

If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; if you would know, and not be known, live in a city.

Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us - never cease to instruct - never cloy.

Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.

He that places himself neither higher nor lower than he ought to do exercises the truest humility.

Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish.

There are three modes of bearing the ills of life, by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion.

That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.

most men know what they hate; few what they love

True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.

The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world.

If it be true that men of strong imaginations are usually dogmatists—and I am inclined to think it is so—it ought to follow that men of weak imaginations are the reverse; in which case we should have some compensation for stupidity. But it unfortunately happens that no dogmatist is more obstinate or less open to conviction than a fool.

As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.

There is this difference between the two temporal blessings - health and money; money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed; health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied; and this superiority of the latter is still more obvious when we reflec.

Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.

Our minds are as different as our faces. We are all traveling to one destination: happiness, but few are going by the same road.

Theories are private property, but truth is common stock.

He who studies books alone will know how things ought to be, and he who studies men will know how they are.

Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.

Friendship, of itself a holy tie, is made more sacred by adversity.

Falsehood is never so successful as when she baits her hook with truth, and no opinions so fatally mislead us as those that are not wholly wrong, as no watches so effectively deceive the wearer as those that are sometimes right.

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

We own almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed.

It is always safe to learn, even from our enemies; seldom safe to venture to instruct, even our friends.

Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in their actions.

Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase.

Revenge is a much more punctual paymaster than gratitude

He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place.

Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together.

Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route.

The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.

Our very best friends have a tincture of jealousy even in their friendship; and when they hear us praised by others, will ascribe it to sinister and interested motives if they can.

Patience is the support of weakness; impatience the ruin of strength.

Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.

To know a man, observe how he wins his object, rather than how he loses it; for when we fail, our pride supports us - when we succeed, it betrays us.

There are some frauds so well conducted that it would be stupidity not to be deceived by them.

The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility.

Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores.

Avarice has ruined more souls than extravagance.

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.

When in reading we meet with any maxim that may be of use, we should take it for our own, and make an immediate application of it, as we would of the advice of a friend whom we have purposely consulted.

Vice has more martyrs than virtue; and it often happens that men suffer more to be lost than to be saved.

Life often presents us with a choice of evils, rather than of goods.

Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase.

There is this paradox in pride - it makes some men ridiculous, but prevents others from becoming so.

In religion as in politics it so happens that we have less charity for those who believe half our creed, than for those who deny the whole of it.

Mystery is not profoundness.

Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it; anything but live for it.

Men's arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.

The three great apostles of practical atheism, that make converts without persecuting, and retain them without preaching, are wealth, health and power.

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