Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

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

It is a mistake, that a lust for power is the mark of a great mind; for even the weakest have been captivated by it; and for minds of the highest order, it has no charms.

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.

The true motives of our actions, like the real pipes of an organ, are usually concealed; but the gilded and hollow pretext is pompously placed in the front for show.

The martyrs to vice far exceed the martyrs to virtue, both in endurance and in number.

We injure mysteries, which are matters of faith, by any attempt at explanation in order to make them matters of reason. Could they be explained, they would cease to be mysteries; and it has been well said that a thing is not necessarily against reason because it happens to be above it.

God is on the side of virtue; for whoever dreads punishment suffers it, and whoever deserves it, dreads it .

If sensuality be our only happiness we ought to envy the brutes, for instinct is a surer, shorter, safer guide to such happiness than reason.

"Lawyers Are": The only civil delinquents whose judges must of necessity be chosen from (amongst) themselves.

He that knows himself, knows others; and he that is ignorant of himself, could not write a very profound lecture on other men's heads.

Sometimes the greatest adversities turn out to be the greatest blessings.

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

The more gross the fraud the more glibly will it go down, and the more greedily be swallowed, since folly will always find faith where impostors will find imprudence.

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

Self-denial is often the sacrifice of one sort of self-love for another.

Slight sorrow for sin is sufficient, provided it at the same time produces amendment.

Duke Chartres used to boast that no man could have less real value for character than himself, yet he would gladly give twenty thousand pounds for a good one, because he could immediately make double that sum by means of it.

It is seldom that statesmen have the option of choosing between a good and an evil.

Sensibility would be a good portress if she had but one hand; with her right she opens the door to pleasure, but with her left to pain.

Love is an alliance of friendship and animalism; if the former predominates it is passion exalted and refined; if the latter, gross and sensual.

Error, when she retraces her steps, has farther to go before she can arrive at truth than ignorance.

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

Wit in women is a jewel, which, unlike all others, borrows lustre from its setting, rather than bestows it; since nothing is so easy as to fancy a very beautiful woman extremely witty.

Self-love, in a well-regulated breast, is as the steward of the household, superintending the expenditure, and seeing that benevolence herself should be prudential, in order to be permanent, by providing that the reservoir which feeds should also be fed.

All the poets are indebted more or less to those who have gone before them; even Homer's originality has been questioned, and Virgil owes almost as much to Theocritus, in his Pastorals, as to Homer, in his Heroics; and if our own countryman, Milton, has soared above both Homer and Virgil, it is because he has stolen some feathers from their wings.

We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves; it is civil war.

Neutrality is no favorite with Providence, for we are so formed that it is scarcely possible for us to stand neuter in our hearts, although we may deem it prudent to appear so in our actions

Cheerfulness ought to be the viaticum vitae of their life to the old; age without cheerfulness is a Lapland winter without a sun.

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.

Extemporaneous and oral harangues will always have this advantage over those that are read from a in manuscript: every burst of eloquence or spark of genius they may contain, however studied they may have been beforehand, will appear to the audience to be the effect of the sudden inspiration of talent.

Envy ought to have no place allowed it in the hearts of people; for the goods of this present world are so vile and low that they are beneath it; and those of the future world are so vast and exalted that they are above it.

Early rising not only gives us more life in the same number of years, but adds, likewise, to their number; and not only enables us to enjoy more of existence in the same time, but increases also the measure.

Pity a thing often avowed, seldom felt; hatred is a thing often felt, seldom avowed.

A man's profundity may keep him from opening on a first interview, and his caution on a second; but I should suspect his emptiness, if he carried on his reserve to a third.

Accustom yourself to submit on all and every occasion, and on the most minute, no less than on the most important circumstances of life, to a small present evil, to obtain a greater distant good. This will give decision, tone, and energy to the mind, which, thus disciplined, will often reap victory from defeat and honor from repulse.

The breast of a good man is a little heaven commencing on earth; where the Deity sits enthroned with unrivaled influence, every subjugated passion, "like the wind and storm, fulfilling his word.

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

The road to glory would cease to be arduous if it were trite and trodden; and great minds must be ready not only to take opportunities but to make them.

To look back to antiquity is one thing, to go back to it is another.

It is astonishing how much more people are interested in lengthening life than improving it.

We should choose our books as we would our companions, for their sterling and intrinsic merit.

It is the briefest yet wisest maxim which tells us to meddle not.

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.

When we are in the company of sensible men, we ought to be doubly cautious of talking too much, lest we lose two good things, their good opinion and our own improvement; for what we have to say we know, but what they have to say we know not.

He that is gone so far as to cut the claws of the lion, will not feel himself quite secure, until he has also drawn his teeth.

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

Injuries accompanied with insults are never forgiven: all men, on these occasions, are good haters, and lay out their revenge at compound interest.

Contemporaries appreciate the person rather than their merit, posterity will regard the merit rather than the person.