Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

It is far better to borrow experience than to buy it.

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.

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

He that has never suffered extreme adversity knows not the full extent of his own depravation.

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

Be real and adjust you strategy according to honest results.

Attempts at reform, when they fail, strengthen despotism, as he that struggles tightens those cords he does not succeed in breaking.

It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat.

Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.

God is as great in minuteness as He is in magnitude.

Temperate men drink the most, because they drink the longest.

Sir Richard Steele has observed, that there is this difference between the Church of Rome and the Church of England: the one professes to be infallible, the other to be never in the wrong.

Time, the cradle of hope, but the grave of ambition, is the stern corrector of fools, but the salutary counselor of the wise, bringing all they dread to the one, and all they desire to the other.

I have somewhere seen it observed that we should make the same use of a book that the bee does of a flower: she steals sweets from it, but does not injure it.

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.

Most females will forgive a liberty rather than a slight

The Grecian’s maxim would indeed be a sweeping clause in Literature; it would reduce many a giant to a pygmy; many a speech to a sentence; and many a folio to a primer.

Butler compared the tongues of these eternal talkers to race-horses, which go the faster the less weight they carry.

A power above all human responsibility ought to be above all human attainment.

If merited, no courage can stand against its just indignation.

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.

The acquirements of science maybe termed the armor of the mind.

Make no enemies; he is insignificant indeed that can do thee no harm.

There are both dull correctness and piquant carelessness; it is needless to say which will command the most readers and have the most influence.

The rich are more envied by those who have a little, than by those who have nothing.

Reply to wit with gravity, and to gravity with wit.

The most consistent men are not more unlike to others, than they are at times to themselves.

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.

The acquirements of science may be termed the armour of the mind; but that armour would be worse than useless, that cost us all we had, and left us nothing to defend.

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.

It is not so difficult a task as to plant new truths, as to root out old errors

In science, reason is the guide; in poetry, taste. The object of the one is truth, which is uniform and indivisible; the object of the other is beauty, which is multiform and varied.

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

Time is the measurer of all things, but is itself immeasurable, and the grand discloser of all things, but is itself undisclosed.

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.

There are three kinds of power,--wealth, strength, and talent; but as old age always weakens, often destroys, the two latter, the aged are induced to cling with the greater avidity to the former.

Peace is the evening star of the soul, as virtue is its sun, and the two are never far apart.

The masses procure their opinions ready made in open market.

When certain persons abuse us, let us ask ourselves what description of characters it is that they admire; we shall often find this a very consolatory question.

The press is the foe of rhetoric, but the friend of reason.

The most zealous converters are always the most rancorous when they fail of producing conversion.

In all countries where nature does the most, man does the least.

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

Some reputed saints that have been canonized ought to have been cannonaded.

Mental pleasures never cloy; unlike those of the body, they are increased by reputation, approved by reflection, and strengthened by enjoyment.

Tomorrow! It is a period nowhere to be found in all the registers of time, unless, perchance, in the fool's calendar.

Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.

It is a common observation that any fool can get money; but they are not wise that think so.

It is an easy and vulgar thing to please the mob, and no very arduous task to astonish them.

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