C. C. Colton Quotes

The inheritance of a distinguished and noble name is a proud inheritance to him who lives worthily of it.

There are many that despise half the world; but if there be any that despise the whole of it, it is because the other half despises them.

Most men know what they hate, few what they love.

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

In answering an opponent, arrange your ideas, but not your words.

Novels may teach us as wholesome a moral as the pulpit. There are "sermons in stones," in healthy books, and "good in everything.

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

Charles Fox said that restorations were the most bloody of all revolutions; and he might have added that reformations are the best mode of preventing the necessity of either.

Shakespeare, Butler and Bacon have rendered it extremely difficult for all who come after them to be sublime, witty or profound.

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

Where we cannot invent, we may at least improve.

Words are in this respect like water, that they often take their taste, flavour, and character, from the mouth out of which they proceed, as the water from the channel through which it flows.

An honest man will continue to be so though surrounded on all sides by rogues.

Oppression cannot prosper where none will submit to be enslaved.

The temple of truth is built indeed of stones of crystal, but, inasmuch as men have been concerned in rearing it, it has been consolidated by a cement composed of baser materials.

There can be no Christianity where there is no charity

The plainest man who pays attention to women, will sometimes succeed as well as the handsomest man who does not.

The next thing to having wisdom ourselves, is to profit by that of others.

put on the livery of the best master only to serve the worst.

If we trace the history of most revolutions, we shall find that the first inroads upon the laws have been made by the governors, as often as by the governed.

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

Of all the faculties of the mind, memory is the first that flourishes, and the first that dies.

In great cities men are more callous both to the happiness and the misery of others, than in the country; for they are constantly in the habit of seeing both extremes.

From the preponderance of talent, we may always infer the soundness and vigour of the commonwealth; but from the preponderance of riches, its dotage and degeneration.

Many a man may thank his talent for his rank, but no man has ever been able to return the compliment by thanking his rank for his talent.

Never join with your friend when he abuses his horse or his wife, unless the one is about to be sold, the other to be buried.

There are some who write, talk, and think, so much about vice and virtue, that they have no time to practice either the one or the other.

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

Life is the jailer of the soul in this filthy prison, and its only deliverer is death.

Light, whether it be material or moral, is the best reformer; for it prevents those disorders which other remedies sometimes cure, but sometimes confirm.

Of two evils, it is perhaps less injurious to society, that good doctrine should be accompanied by a bad life, than that a good life should lend its support to a bad doctrine.

Fashion ... has brought every thing into vogue, by turns.

Much too oft we make life gloomy-- When happy we might be, If we gathered more of sunshine, And not dark shadows see.

Love is an alchemist that can transmute poison into food.

False reasoners are often best confuted by giving them the full swing of their own absurdities.

There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise.

The moral cement of all society is virtue; it unites and preserves, while vice separates and destroys.

That theatrical kind of virtue, which requires publicity for its stage, and an applauding world for its audience, could not be depended on, in the secrecy of solitude, or the retirement of a desert.

Love, like the cold bath, is never negative, it seldom leaves us where it finds us; if once we plunge into it, it will either heighten our virtues, or inflame our vices.

Modesty is the richest ornament of a woman ... the want of it is her greatest deformity.

True goodness is not without that germ of greatness that can bear with patience the mistakes of the ignorant.

Opinions, like showers, are generated in high places, but they invariably descend into lower ones, and ultimately flow down to the people as rain unto the sea.

To despise our own species is the price we must often pay for knowledge of it.

If a book really wants the patronage of a great name, it is a bad book; and if it be a good book, it wants it not.

Worldly wisdom dictates to her disciples the propriety of dressing somewhat beyond their means, but of living somewhat within them.

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

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

It was observed of Elizabeth that she was weak herself, but chose wise counsellors; to which it was replied, that to choose wise counsellors was, in a prince, the highest wisdom.

You cannot separate charity and religion.

The seat of perfect contentment is in the head; for every individual is thoroughly satisfied with his own proportion of brains.