Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.

Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straight forward and simple integrity in another.

The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum.

The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read.

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them; such persons covet secrets as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation.

Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.

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

Atheism is a system which can communicate neither warmth nor illumination, except from those fagots which your mistaken zeal has lighted up for its destruction.

Deliberate with caution, but act with decision and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.

The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.

There are some frauds so well conducted that it would be stupidity not to be deceived by 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.

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.

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.

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

Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.

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

Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past, even while we attempt to define it.

Money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed. Health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied.

It is better to meet danger than to wait for it. He that is on a lee shore, and foresees a hurricane, stands out to sea and encounters a storm to avoid a shipwreck.

Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase.

If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; if you would know, and not be known, live in a city.

We must be careful how we flatter fools too little, or wise men too much, for the flatterer must act the very reverse of the physician, and administer the strongest dose only to the weakest patient.

If you want enemies, excel others; if you want friends, let others excel you.

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

Happiness ... leads none of us by the same route.

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

Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route.

Insults are engendered from vulgar minds, like toadstools from a dunghill.

To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.

The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end.

Bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret.

Friendship, of itself a holy tie, is made more sacred by adversity.

If Satan ever laughs, it must be at hypocrites; they are the greatest dupes he has.

Villainy that is vigilant will be an overmatch for virtue, if she slumber at her post.

There are three difficulties in authorship; to write any thing worth the publishing — to find honest men to publish it — and to get sensible men to read it.

Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and hell a fable.

Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.

As the gout seems privileged to attack the bodies of the wealthy, so ennui seems to exert a similar prerogative over their minds.

Man, if he compare himself with all that he can see, is at the zenith of power; but if he compare himself with all that he can conceive, he is at the nadir of weakness.

He who knows himself knows others.

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

A hug is worth a thousand words.

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

Most plagiarists, like the drone, have neither taste to select, industry to acquire, nor skill to improve, but impudently pilfer the honey ready prepared, from the hive.

He [the miser] falls down and worships the god of this world, but will have neither its pomps, its vanities nor its pleasures for his trouble.

It is a mistake, that a lust for power is the mark of a great mind; for even the weakest have been captivated by it; and for minds of the highest order, it has no charms.

Some are cursed with the fullness of satiety; and how can they bear the ills of life when its very pleasures fatigue them?

He that is good will infallibly become better, and he that is bad will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue, and time are three things that never stand still.

Life isn't like a book. Life isn't logical or sensible or orderly. Life is a mess most of the time. And theology must be lived in the midst of that mess.