Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

It has been shrewdly said, that when, men abuse us we should suspect ourselves, and when they praise us, them. It is a rare instance of virtue to despise which censure which we do not deserve; and still more rare to despise praise which we do.

Wars are to the body politic, what drams are to the individual. There are times when they may prevent a sudden death, but if frequently resorted to, or long persisted in, they heighten the energies only to hasten the dissolution.

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.

Courage is like the diamond,
very brilliant; not changed by fire, capable of high polish, but except for the purpose of cutting hard bodies useless.

Happiness is that single and glorious thing which is the very light and sun of the whole animated universe; and where she is not it were better that nothing should be.

Mathematicians have sought knowledge in figures, Philosophers in systems, Logicians in subtleties, and Metaphysicians in sounds. It is not in any nor in all of these. He that studies only men, will get the body of knowledge without the soul, and he that studies only books, the soul without the body.

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.

The whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other

If we look backwards to antiquity it should be as those that are winning a race.

Those that will not permit their wealth to do any good for others ... cut themselves off from the truest pleasure here and the highest happiness later.

It is always easy to shut a book, but not quite so easy to get rid of a lettered coxcomb.

That alliance may be said to have a double tie, where the minds are united as well as the body; and the union will have all its strength when both the links are in perfection together.

Fortune has been considered the guardian divinity of fools; and, on this score, she has been accused of blindness; but it should rather be adduced as a proof of her sagacity, when she helps those who cannot help themselves.

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

We are not more ingenious in searching out bad motives for good actions when performed by others, than good motives for bad actions when performed by ourselves.

There can be no Christianity where there is no charity

Love is a volcano, the crater of which no wise man will approach too nearly, lest ... he should be swallowed up.

We know the effects of many things, but the cause of few; experience, therefore, is a surer guide than imagination, and inquiry than conjecture.

Let those who would affect singularity with success first determine to be very virtuous, and they will be sure to be very singular.

The greatest miracle that the Almighty could perform would be to make a bad man happy, even in heaven; he must unparadise that blessed place to accomplish it. In its primary signification, all vice
that is, all excess
brings its own punishment even here.

What would you do if you knew for sure that no one would ever find out?

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

It is doubtful whether mankind are most indebted to those who like Bacon and Butler dig the gold from the mine of literature, or to those who, like Paley, purify it, stamp it, fix its real value, and give it currency and utility

All adverse and depressing influences can be overcome, not by fighting, by by rising above them.

With respect to the authority of great names, it should be remembered that he alone deserves to have any weight and influence with posterity, who has shown himself superior to the particular and predominant error of his own times; who, like the peak of Teneriffe, has hailed the intellectual sun before its beams have reached the horizon of common minds.

Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.

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.

Pride is less ashamed of being ignorant, than of being instructed, and she looks too high to find that, which very often lies beneath her.

There are only two things in which the false professors of all religions have agreed
to persecute all other sects and to plunder their own.

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

I question if Epicurus and Hume have done mankind a greater service by the looseness of their doctrines than by the purity of their lives. Of such men we may more justly exclaim, than of Caesar, Confound their virtues, they've undone the world!

If you cannot avoid a quarrel with a blackguard, let your lawyer manage it, rather than yourself. No man sweeps his own chimney, but employs a chimney-sweeper, who has no objection to dirty work, because it is his trade.

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

Levity is often less foolish and gravity less wise than each of them appears.

In its primary signification, all vice, that is, all excess, brings on its own punishment, even here. By certain fixed, settled and established laws of Him who is the God of nature, excess of every kind destroys that constitution which temperance would preserve. The debauchee offers up his body a living sacrifice to sin.

It is a curious paradox that precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity, to those mysterious powers assumed by others; and in those regions of darkness and ignorance where man cannot effect even those things that are within the power of man, there we shall ever find that a blind belief in feats that are far beyond those powers has taken the deepest root in the minds of the deceived, and produced the richest harvest to the knavery of the deceiver.

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

Strong as our passions are, they may be starved into submission, and conquered without being killed.

Style is indeed the valet of genius, and an able one too; but as the true gentleman will appear, even in rags, so true genius will shine, even through the coarsest style.

Physicians must discover the weaknesses of the human mind, and even condescend to humor them, or they will never be called in to cure the infirmities of the body.

Neither can we admit that definition of genius that some would propose
"a power to accomplish all that we undertake;" for we might multiply examples to prove that this definition of genius contains more than the thing defined. Cicero failed in poetry, Pope in painting, Addison in oratory; yet it would be harsh to deny genius to these men.

Physical courage, which despises all danger, will make a man brave in one way; and moral courage, which despises all opinion, will make a man brave in another.

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.

Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live

He that can enjoy the intimacy of the great, and on no occasion disgust them by familiarity, or disgrace himself by servility, proves that he is as perfect a gentleman by nature as his companions are by rank.

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.

Love may exist without jealousy, although this is rare: but jealousy may exist without love, and this is common; for jealousy can feed on that which is bitter no less than on that which is sweet, and is sustained by pride as often as by affection.

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?

Alas! how has the social spirit of Christianity been perverted by fools at one time, and by knaves and bigots at another; by the self-tormentors of the cell, and the all-tormentors of the conclave!

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.

Honor is unstable and seldom the same; for she feeds upon opinion, and is as fickle as her food.

The integrity that lives only on opinion would starve without it.

Very great personages are not likely to form very just estimates either of others or of themselves; their knowledge of themselves is obscured by the flattery of others; their knowledge of others is equally clouded by circumstances peculiar to themselves. For in the presence of the great, the modest are sure to suffer from too much diffidence, and the confident from too much display.

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

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.

Pure truth, like pure gold, has been found unfit for circulation because men have discovered that it is far more convenient to adulterate the truth than to refine themselves.

A town, before it can be plundered and, deserted, must first be taken; and in this particular Venus has borrowed a law from her consort Mars. A woman that wishes to retain her suitor must keep him in the trenches; for this is a siege which the besieger never raises for want of supplies, since a feast is more fatal to love than a fast, and a surfeit than a starvation. Inanition may cause it to die a slow death, but repletion always destroys it by a sudden one.

No disorders have employed so many quacks, as those that have no cure; and no sciences have exercised so many quills, as those that have no certainty.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Light, whether it be material or moral, is the best reformer.

The good opinion of our fellow men is the strongest, though not the purest motive to virtue.

Men's arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.

He that sympathizes in all the happiness of others, perhaps himself enjoys the safest happiness.

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

It is an easy and vulgar thing to please the mob, and not a very arduous task to astonish them; but essentially to benefit and to improve them is a work fraught with difficulty, and teeming with danger.

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.

We devote the activity of our youth to revelry and the decrepitude of our old age to repentance: and we finish the farce by bequeathing our dead bodies to the chancel, which when living, we interdicted from the church.

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.

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

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

The policy that can strike only while the iron is hot will be overcome by that perseverance, which ... can make that iron hot by striking and he that can only rule the storm must yield to him who can both raise and rule it.

If you are under obligations to many, it is prudent to postpone the recompensing of one, until it be in your power to remunerate all; otherwise you will make more enemies by what you give, than by what you withhold.

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.

He that abuses his own profession will not patiently bear with any one else who does so. And this is one of our most subtle operations of self-love. For when we abuse our own profession, we tacitly except ourselves; but when another abuses it, we are far from being certain that this is the case.

There is no quality of the mind, or of the body, that so instantaneously and irresistibly captivates, as wit. An elegant writer has observed that wit may do very well for a mistress, but that he should prefer reason for a wife. He that deserts the latter, and gives himself up entirely to the guidance of the former, will certainly fall into many pitfalls and quagmires, like him who walks by flashes of lightning, rather than the steady beams of the sun.

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

Pleasure is to women what the sun is to the flower; if moderately enjoyed, it beautifies, it refreshes, and it improves; if immoderately, it withers, deteriorates and destroys.

Religion, like its votaries, while it exists on earth, must have a body as well as a soul. A religion purely spiritual might suit a being as pure, but men are compound animals; and the body too often lords it over the mind.

Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice makes concerning wealth. She begins by accumulating power as a means to happiness, and she finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end.

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.

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.

What is earthly happiness? that phantom of which we hear so much, and see so little; whose promises are constantly given and constantly broken, but as constantly believed; that cheats us with the sound instead of the substance, and with the blossom instead of the fruit. Like Juno, she is a goddess in pursuit, but a cloud in possession.

Envy is the coward side of Hate, And all her ways are bleak and desolate.

Death is the only sovereign whom no partiality can warp, and no price corrupt.

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.

Shining outward qualities, although they may excite first-rate expectations, are not unusually found to be the companions of second-rate abilities.

The awkwardness and embarrassment which all feel on beginning to write, when they themselves are the theme, ought to serve as a hint to author's that self is a subject they ought very rarely to descant upon.

It is in the middle classes of society that all the finest feeling, and the most amiable propensities of our nature do principally nourish and abound. For the good opinion of our fellow-men is the strongest though not the purest motive to virtue. The privations of poverty render us too cold and callous, and the privileges of property too arrogant and confidential, to feel; the first places us beneath the influence of opinion
the second, above it.

Wars of opinion, as they have been the most destructive, are also the most disgraceful of conflicts.

Be very slow to believe that you are wiser than all others; it is a fatal but common error. Where one has been saved by a true estimation of another's weakness, thousands have been destroyed by a false appreciation of their own strength.

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

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.

We often pretend to fear what we really despise, and more often despise what we really fear.

A wise minister would rather preserve peace than gain a victory, because he knows that even the most successful war leaves nations generally more poor, always more profligate, than it found them.

Time ... advances like the slowest tide, but retreats like the swiftest torrent.

Perhaps that is nearly the perfection of good writing which is original, but whose truth alone prevents the reader from suspecting that it is so; and which effects that for knowledge which the lens effects for the sunbeam, when it condenses its brightness in order to increase its force.