C. C. Colton Quotes
We know the effects of many things, but the cause of few; experience, therefore, is a surer guide than imagination, and inquiry than conjecture.
Is there anything more tedious than the often repeated tales of the old and forgetful?
A high degree of intellectual refinement in the female is the surest pledge society can have for the improvement of the male.
Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow; but the misfortune is that in this particular case, the substance belongs to the shadow, the emptiness to its cause.
It may be observed of good writing, as of good blood, that it is much easier to say what it is composed of than to compose it.
Secrecy is the soul of all great designs. Perhaps more has been effected by concealing our own intentions than by discovering those of our enemy.
Courage is generosity of the highest order, for the brave are prodigal of the most precious things.
Subtract from many modern poets all that may be found in Shakespeare, and trash will remain.
Whenever we find ourselves more inclined to persecute than to persuade, we may then be certain that our zeal has more of pride in it than of charity.
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.
He that has never suffered extreme adversity knows not the full extent of his own depravation.
Attempts at reform, when they fail, strengthen despotism, as he that struggles tightens those cords he does not succeed in breaking.
Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
