Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

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The road to glory would cease to be arduous if it were trite and trodden; and great minds must be ready not only to take opportunities but to make them.

Charles Caleb Colton
Taking things not as they ought to be, but as they are, I fear it must be allowed that Macchiavelli will always have more disciples than Jesus.

Charles Caleb Colton
Heroism, self-denial, and magnanimity, in all instances where they do not spring from a principle of religion, are but splendid altars on which we sacrifice one kind of self-love to another.

Charles Caleb Colton
The plainest man who pays attention to women, will sometimes succeed as well as the handsomest man who does not.

Charles Caleb Colton
There are too many who reverse both the principles and the practice of the Apostles; they become all things to all men, not to serve others, but themselves; and they try all things only to hold fast that which is bad.

Charles Caleb Colton
Few things are more agreeable to self-love than revenge, and yet no cause so effectually restrains us from revenge as self-love. And this paradox naturally suggests another; that the strength of the community is not unfrequently built upon the weakness of those individuals that compose it.

Charles Caleb Colton
A coxcomb begins by determining that his own profession is the first; and he finishes by deciding that he is the first of profession.

Charles Caleb Colton
As there are some faults that have been termed faults on the right side, so there are some errors that might be denominated errors on the safe side. Thus we seldom regret having been too mild, too cautious, or too humble; but we often repent having been too violent, too precipitate, or too proud.

Charles Caleb Colton
Some men who know that they are great are so very haughty withal and insufferable that their acquaintance discover their greatness only by the tax of humility which they are obliged to pay as the price of their friendship.

Charles Caleb Colton
It is by testing that we discern fine gold.

Charles Caleb Colton
Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.

Charles Caleb Colton
When we are in the company of sensible men, we ought to be doubly cautious of talking too much, lest we lose two good things, their good opinion and our own improvement; for what we have to say we know, but what they have to say we know not.

Charles Caleb Colton
That theatrical kind of virtue, which requires publicity for its stage, and an applauding world for its audience, could not be depended on, in the secrecy of solitude, or the retirement of a desert.

Charles Caleb Colton
With respect to the authority of great names, it should be remembered that he alone deserves to have any weight and influence with posterity, who has shown himself superior to the particular and predominant error of his own times; who, like the peak of Teneriffe, has hailed the intellectual sun before its beams have reached the horizon of common minds.

Charles Caleb Colton
If once a woman breaks through the barriers of decency, her ease is desperate; and if she goes greater lengths than the men, and leaves the pale of propriety farther behind her, it is because she is aware that all return is prohibited, and by none so strongly as by her own sex.

Charles Caleb Colton
Philosophy is a goddess, whose head indeed is in heaven, but whose feet are upon earth; she attempts more than she accomplishes, and promises more than she performs.

Charles Caleb Colton
The praise of the envious is far less creditable than their censure; they praise only that which they can surpass, but that which surpasses them they censure.

Charles Caleb Colton
There are two things which ought to teach us to think but meanly of human glory; the very best have had their calumniators, the very worst their panegyrists.

Charles Caleb Colton
To be satisfied with the acquittal of the world, though accompanied with the secret condemnation of conscience, this is the mark of a little mind; but it requires a soul of no common stamp to be satisfied with its own acquittal, and to despise the condemnation of the world.

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

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
Oppression cannot prosper where none will submit to be enslaved.

Charles Caleb Colton
Persecuting bigots may be compared to those burning lenses which Lenhenboeck and others composed from ice; by their chilling apathy they freeze the suppliant; by their fiery zeal they burn the sufferer.

Charles Caleb Colton