Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

517 Sourced Quotes

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
If martyrdom is now on the decline, it is not because martyrs are less zealous, but because martyr-mongers are more wise. The light of intellect has put out the fire of persecution, as other fires are observed to smoulder before the light of the same.

Charles Caleb Colton
Words indeed are but the signs and counters of knowledge, and their currency should be strictly regulated by the capital which they represent.

Charles Caleb Colton
There are many who say more than the truth on some occasions, and balance the account with their consciences by saying less than the truth on others. But the fact is that they are in both instances as fraudulant as he would be that exacted more than his due from his debtors, and paid less than their due to his creditors.

Charles Caleb Colton
Revenge is a debt, in the paying of which the greatest knave is honest and sincere, and, so far as he is able, punctual.

Charles Caleb Colton
Were the life of man prolonged, he would become such a proficient in villainy, that it would become necessary again to drown or to burn the world. Earth would become an hell; for future rewards when put off to a great distance, would cease to encourage, and future punishments to alarm.

Charles Caleb Colton
The rich are more envied by those who have a little, than by those who have nothing.

Charles Caleb Colton
He that, standing on the shore, foretells, with truth, many of the undiscovered treasures of the ocean of science, even before the vessel that is to navigate it, can be fully equipped for the voyage, gives us a convincing proof of exalted wisdom, and of profound penetration.

Charles Caleb Colton
A theory is a well-defined structure that we hope is in correspondence with what we observe. It's an architecture, a cathedral.

Charles Caleb Colton
A thorough-paced knave will rarely quarrel with one whom he can cheat: his revenge is plunder; therefore he is usually the most forgiving of beings, upon the principle that if he come to an open rupture, he must defend himself; and this does not suit a man whose vocation it is to keep his hands in the pocket of another.

Charles Caleb Colton
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.

Charles Caleb Colton
Self-love, in a well-regulated breast, is as the steward of the household, superintending the expenditure, and seeing that benevolence herself should be prudential, in order to be permanent, by providing that the reservoir which feeds should also be fed.

Charles Caleb Colton
Princes rule the people, and their own passions rule Princes; but Providence can over-rule the whole, and draw the instruments of his inscrutable purposes from the vices, no less than the virtues of Kings.

Charles Caleb Colton
Hannibal knew better how to conquer than how to profit by the conquest; and Napoleon was more skilful in taking positions than in maintaining them. As to reverses, no general cart presume to say that he may not be defeated; but he can, and ought to say, that he will not be surprised.

Charles Caleb Colton
Cheerfulness ought to be the viaticum vitae of their life to the old; age without cheerfulness is a Lapland winter without a sun.

Charles Caleb Colton
A high degree of intellectual refinement in the female is the surest pledge society can have for the improvement of the male.

Charles Caleb Colton
The most notorious swindler has not assumed so many names as self-love, nor is so much ashamed of his own. She calls herself patriotism, when at the same time she is rejoicing at just as much calamity to her native country as will introduce herself into power, and expel her rivals.

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

Charles Caleb Colton
It is sufficiently humiliating to our nature to reflect that our knowledge is but as she rivulet, our ignorance as the sea. On points of the highest interest, the moment we quit the light of revelation we shall find that Platonism itself is intimately connected with Pyrrhonism, and the deepest inquiry with the darkest doubt.

Charles Caleb Colton
To be continually subject to the breath of slander, will tarnish the purest virtue, as a constant exposure to the atmosphere will obscure the brightness of the finest gold; but in either case, the real value of both continues the same, although the currency may be somewhat impeded.

Charles Caleb Colton