Charles Caleb Colton Quotes
My lowest days as a Christian have been more fulfilling and rewarding than all the days of glory in the White House.
He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place.
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.
The worst thing that can be said of the most powerful is that they can take your life; but the same can be said of the most weak.
Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it; anything but live for it.
Our minds are as different as our faces. We are all traveling to one destination: happiness, but few are going by the same road.
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.
He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool.
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.
It is with disease of the mind, as with those of the body; we are half dead before we understand our disorder, and half cured when we do.
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.
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.
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.
Love is an alliance of friendship and animalism; if the former predominates it is passion exalted and refined; if the latter, gross and sensual.
That is fine benevolence, finely executed, which, like the Nile, comes from hidden sources.
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.
Mystery magnifies danger, as a fog the sun, the hand that warned Belshazzar derived its horrifying effect from the want of a body.
Cheerfulness ought to be the viaticum vitae of their life to the old; age without cheerfulness is a Lapland winter without a sun.
The man of pleasure, by a vain attempt to be more happy than any man can be, is often more miserable than most men are.
It is always safe to learn, even from our enemies; seldom safe to venture to instruct, even our friends.
He that gives a portion of his time and talent to the investigation of mathematical truth, will come to all other questions with a decided advantage over his opponents.
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.
It is curious that some learned dunces, because they can write nonsense in languages that are dead, should despise those that talk sense in languages that are living.
As that gallant can best affect a pretended passion for one woman who has no true love for another, so he that has no real esteem for any of the virtues can best assume the appearance of them all.
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.
Of all the marvelous works of God, perhaps the one angels view with the most supreme astonishment, is a proud man.
Flattery is often a traffic of mutual meanness, where although both parties intend deception, neither are deceived.
Contemporaries appreciate the person rather than their merit, posterity will regard the merit rather than the person.
We should not be too niggardly in our praise, for men will do more to support a character than to raise one.
Justice to my readers compels me to admit that I write because I have nothing to do; justice to myself induces me to add that I will cease to write the moment I have nothing to say.
Slight sorrow for sin is sufficient, provided it at the same time produces amendment.
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.
To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread.
There are some men who are fortune's favorites, and who, like cats, light forever on their legs.
Gaming has been resorted to by the affluent as a refuge from ennui. It is a mental dram, and may succeed for a moment; but, like all other stimuli, it produces indirect debility.
Logic and metaphysics make use of more tools than all the rest of the sciences put together, and do the least work.
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.
Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console.
That extremes beget extremes is an apothegm built on the most profound observation of the human mind.
That profound firmness which enabler a man to regard difficulties but as evils to be surmounted, no matter what shape they may assume.
I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself.
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.
The upright, if he suffer calumny to move him, fears the tongue of man more than the eye of God.
Calumny crosses oceans, scales mountains and traverses deserts, with greater ease than the Scythian Abaris, and like him, rides upon a poisoned arrow.
