Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

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The cynic who twitted Aristippus by observing that the philosopher who could dine on herbs might despise the company of a king, was well replied to by Aristippus, when he remarked that the philosopher who could enjoy the company or a king might also despise a dinner of herbs.

Charles Caleb Colton
If kings would only determine not to extend their dominions until they had filled them with happiness, they would find the smallest territories too large, but the longest life too short for the full accomplishment of so grand and so noble an ambition.

Charles Caleb Colton
Antithesis may be the blossom of wit, but it will never arrive at maturity unless sound sense be the trunk and truth the root.

Charles Caleb Colton
Be very slow to believe that you are wiser than all others; it is a fatal but common error.

Charles Caleb Colton
Most of our misfortunes are more supportable than the comments of our friends upon them.

Charles Caleb Colton
The code of poor laws has at length grown up into a tree, which, like the fabulous Upas, overshadows and poisons the land; unwholesome expedients were the bud, dilemmas and depravities have been the blossom, and danger and despair are the bitter fruit.

Charles Caleb Colton
Some men of a secluded and studious life, have sent forth from their closet or their cloister, rays of intellectual light that have agitated courts, and revolutionized kingdoms; like the moon, that far removed from the ocean, and shining upon it with a serene and sober light, is the chief cause of all those ebbings and flowings which incessantly disturb that world of waters.

Charles Caleb Colton
He that abuses his own profession will not patiently bear with any one else who does so. And this is one of our most subtle operations of self-love. For when we abuse our own profession, we tacitly except ourselves; but when another abuses it, we are far from being certain that this is the case.

Charles Caleb Colton
A man's profundity may keep him from opening on a first interview, and his caution on a second; but I should suspect his emptiness, if he carried on his reserve to a third.

Charles Caleb Colton
Adroit observers will find that some who affect to dislike flattery, may yet be flattered indirectly, by a well seasoned abuse and ridicule of their rivals.

Charles Caleb Colton
Short as life is, some find it long enough to outlive their characters, their constitutions and their estates.

Charles Caleb Colton
The only kind office performed for us by our friends of which we never complain is our funeral; and the only thing which we most want, happens to be the only thing we never purchase--our coffin.

Charles Caleb Colton
Duke Chartres used to boast that no man could have less real value for character than himself, yet he would gladly give twenty thousand pounds for a good one, because he could immediately make double that sum by means of it.

Charles Caleb Colton
The reign of terror to which France submitted has been more justly termed "the reign of cowardice." One knows not which most to execrate,--the nation that could submit to suffer such atrocities, or that low and bloodthirsty demagogue that could inflict them. France, in succumbing to such a wretch as Robespierre, exhibited, not her patience, but her pusillanimity.

Charles Caleb Colton
In all places, and in all times, those religionists who have believed too much have been more inclined to violence and persecution than those who have believed too little.

Charles Caleb Colton
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.

Charles Caleb Colton
Repartee is perfect when it effects its purpose with a double edge. It is the highest order of wit, as it indicates the coolest yet quickest exercise of genius, at a moment when the passions are roused.

Charles Caleb Colton
It is astonishing how much more anxious people are to lengthen life than to improve it; and as misers often lose large sums of money in attempting to make more, so do hypochondriacs squander large sums of time in search of nostrums by which they vainly hope they may get more time to squander.

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

Charles Caleb Colton
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.

Charles Caleb Colton
There is one passage in the Scriptures to which all the potentates of Europe seem to have given their unanimous assent and approbation...."There went out a decree in the days of Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed."

Charles Caleb Colton
There is a diabolical trio existing in the natural man, implacable, inextinguishable, co-operative and consentaneous, pride, envy, and hate; pride that makes us fancy we deserve all the goods that others possess; envy that some should be admired while we are overlooked; and hate, because all that is bestowed on others, diminishes the sum we think due to ourselves.

Charles Caleb Colton
Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.

Charles Caleb Colton
He that places himself neither higher nor lower than he ought to do exercises the truest humility.

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

Charles Caleb Colton
Criticism discloses that which it would fain conceal, but conceals that which it professes to disclose; it is therefore, read by the discerning, not to discover the merits of an author, but the motives of his critic.

Charles Caleb Colton
There are prating coxcombs in the world who would rather talk than listen, although Shakespeare himself were the orator, and human nature the theme!

Charles Caleb Colton
Genius, when employed in works whose tendency it is to demoralize and to degrade us, should be contemplated with abhorrence rather than with admiration; such a monument of its power, may indeed be stamped with immortality, but like the Coliseum at Rome, we deplore its magnificence because we detest the purposes for which it was designed.

Charles Caleb Colton
Our wealth is often a snare to ourselves, and always a temptation to others.

Charles Caleb Colton
As the grand discordant harmony of the celestial bodies may be explained by the simple principles of gravity and impulse, so also in that more wonderful and complicated microcosm, the heart of man, all the phenomena of morals are perhaps resolvable into one single principle, the pursuit of apparent good; for although customs universally vary, yet man in all climates and countries is essentially the same.

Charles Caleb Colton