Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

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Style is indeed the valet of genius, and an able one too; but as the true gentleman will appear, even in rags, so true genius will shine, even through the coarsest style.

Charles Caleb Colton
We devote the activity of our youth to revelry and the decrepitude of our old age to repentance: and we finish the farce by bequeathing our dead bodies to the chancel, which when living, we interdicted from the church.

Charles Caleb Colton
Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.

Charles Caleb Colton
Wars are to the body politic, what drams are to the individual. There are times when they may prevent a sudden death, but if frequently resorted to, or long persisted in, they heighten the energies only to hasten the dissolution.

Charles Caleb Colton
Vanity finds in self-love so powerful an ally that it storms, as it were, by a coup de main,, the citadel of our heads, where, having blinded the two watchmen, it readily descends into the heart.

Charles Caleb Colton
It has been shrewdly said, that when, men abuse us we should suspect ourselves, and when they praise us, them. It is a rare instance of virtue to despise which censure which we do not deserve; and still more rare to despise praise which we do.

Charles Caleb Colton
Five thousand years have added no improvement to the hive of the bee, nor to the house of the beaver; but look at the habitations and the achievements of men!

Charles Caleb Colton
Secrecy of design, when combined with rapidity of execution, like me column that guided Israel in the deserts, becomes the guardian pillar of light and fire to our friends, a cloud of overwhelming and impenetrable darkness to our enemies.

Charles Caleb Colton
Cruel men are the greatest lovers of Mercy, avaricious men of generosity, and proud men of humility; that is to say, in other, not in themselves.

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

Charles Caleb Colton
We injure mysteries, which are matters of faith by any attempt at explanation in order to make them matters of reason.

Charles Caleb Colton
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.

Charles Caleb Colton
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.

Charles Caleb Colton
The young fancy that their follies are mistaken by the old for happiness. The old fancy that their gravity is mistaken by the young for wisdom.

Charles Caleb Colton
As that gallant can best affect a pretended passion for one woman who has no true love for another, so he that has no real esteem for any of the virtues can best assume the appearance of them all.

Charles Caleb Colton
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.

Charles Caleb Colton
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.

Charles Caleb Colton
The plainest man that can convince a woman that he is really in love with her has done more to make her in love with him than the handsomest man, if he can produce no such conviction. For the love of woman is a shoot, not a seed, and flourishes most vigorously only when ingrafted on that love which is rooted in the breast of another.

Charles Caleb Colton
Two things, well considered, would prevent many quarrels: first, to have it well ascertained whether we are not disputing about terms, rather than things; and, secondly, to examine whether that on which we differ is worth contending about.

Charles Caleb Colton
A cool blooded and crafty politician, when he would be thoroughly revenged on his enemy, makes the injuries which have been inflicted, not on himself, but on others, the pretext of his attack. He thus engages the world as a partisan in his quarrel, and dignifies his private hate, by giving it the air of disinterested resentment.

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

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

Charles Caleb Colton
Observation made in the cloister or in the desert will generally be as obscure as the one and as barren as the other; but he that would paint with his pencil must study originals, and not be over-fearful of a little dust.

Charles Caleb Colton
The learned have often amused themselves by publishing the follies of the dunces; but if the dunces would retaliate by publishing the blunders of the learned, they might for once put forth a volume that would not be dull, although it would be large.

Charles Caleb Colton
Emulation has been termed a spur to virtue, and assumes to be a spur of gold. But it is a spur composed of baser materials, and if tried in the furnace will be found to want that fixedness which is the characteristic of gold. He that pursues virtue, only to surpass others, is not far from wishing others less forward than himself; and he that rejoices too much at his own perfections will be too little grieved at the defects of other men.

Charles Caleb Colton
Knavery is supple, and can bend, but honesty is firm and upright and yields not.

Charles Caleb Colton
Very great personages are not likely to form very just estimates either of others or of themselves; their knowledge of themselves is obscured by the flattery of others; their knowledge of others is equally clouded by circumstances peculiar to themselves. For in the presence of the great, the modest are sure to suffer from too much diffidence, and the confident from too much display.

Charles Caleb Colton
Reform is a good replete with paradox; it is a cathartic which our political quacks, like our medical, recommend to others, but will not take themselves; it is admired by all who cannot effect it, and abused by all who can; it is thought pregnant with danger, for all time that is present, but would have been extremely profitable for that which is past, and will be highly salutary for that which is to come.

Charles Caleb Colton
Courage is generosity of the highest order, for the brave are prodigal of the most precious things.

Charles Caleb Colton
Wit in women is a jewel, which, unlike all others, borrows lustre from its setting, rather than bestows it; since nothing is so easy as to fancy a very beautiful woman extremely witty.

Charles Caleb Colton