Charles Caleb Colton - Men Quotes

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Men spend their lives in anticipations,—in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other—it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future have not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.

Charles Caleb Colton
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.

Charles Caleb Colton
Those illustrious men, who, like torches, have consumed themselves, in order to enlighten others, have often lived unrewarded, and died unlamented. But the tongues of aftertimes have done them justice in one sense, but injustice in another. They have honoured them with their praise, but they have disgraced them with their pity. They pity them forsooth, because they missed of present praise, and temporal emolument; things great indeed to the little, but little to the great.

Charles Caleb Colton
Mathematicians have sought knowledge in figures, Philosophers in systems, Logicians in subtleties, and Metaphysicians in sounds. It is not in any nor in all of these. He that studies only men, will get the body of knowledge without the soul, and he that studies only books, the soul without the body.

Charles Caleb Colton
Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.

Charles Caleb Colton
No men deserve the title of infidels so little as those to whom it has been usually applied; let any of those who renounce Christianity, write fairly down in a book all the absurdities that they believe instead of it, and they will find that it requires more faith to reject Christianity than to embrace it.

Charles Caleb Colton
We should not be too niggardly in our praise, for men will do more to support a character than to raise one.

Charles Caleb Colton
Injuries accompanied with insults are never forgiven: all men, on these occasions, are good haters, and lay out their revenge at compound interest.

Charles Caleb Colton
Pure truth, like pure gold, has been found unfit for circulation, because men have discovered that it is far more convenient to adulterate the truth than to refine themselves.

Charles Caleb Colton
In great cities men are more callous both to the happiness and the misery of others, than in the country; for they are constantly in the habit of seeing both extremes.

Charles Caleb Colton
There is this paradox in pride - it makes some men ridiculous, but prevents others from becoming so.

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

Charles Caleb Colton
From its very inaction, idleness ultimately becomes the most active cause of evil; as a palsy is more to be dreaded than a fever. The Turks have a proverb which says that the devil tempts all other men, but that idle men tempt the devil.

Charles Caleb Colton
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. Literature has now become a game; in which the Booksellers are the Kings; The Critics the Knaves; the Public, the Pack; and the poor Author, the mere table, or the Thing played upon.

Charles Caleb Colton
In life we shall find many men that are great, and some that are good, but very few men that are both great and good.

Charles Caleb Colton
Were we as eloquent as angels, yet should we please some men, some women, and some children, much more by listening, than by talking.

Charles Caleb Colton
Men are more readily contented with no intellectual light than with a little; and wherever they have been taught to acquire some knowledge in order to please others, they have most generally gone on to acquire more, to please themselves.

Charles Caleb Colton
Shrewd and crafty politicians, when they wish to bring about an unpopular measure, must not go straight forward to work, if they do they will certainly fail; and failures to men in power, are like defeats to a general, they shake their popularity. Therefore, since they cannot sail in the teeth of the wind, they must tack, and ultimately gain their object, by appearing at times to be departing from it.

Charles Caleb Colton
Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it; anything but live for it.

Charles Caleb Colton
There are two modes of establishing our reputation; to be praised by honest men, and to be abused by rogues.

Charles Caleb Colton
Men of strong minds and who think for themselves, should not be discouraged on finding occasionally that some of their best ideas have been anticipated by former writers; they will neither anathematize others nor despair themselves. They will rather go on discovering things before discovered, until they are rewarded with a land hitherto unknown, an empire indisputably their own, both right of conquest and of discovery.

Charles Caleb Colton
Religion, like its votaries, while it exists on earth, must have a body as well as a soul. A religion purely spiritual might suit a being as pure, but men are compound animals; and the body too often lords it over the mind.

Charles Caleb Colton
There are many women who have never intrigued, and many men who have never gamed; but those who have done either but once are very extraordinary animals.

Charles Caleb Colton
The good opinion of our fellow men is the strongest, though not the purest motive to virtue.

Charles Caleb Colton
We should have all our communications with men, as in the presence of God; and with God, as in the presence of men.

Charles Caleb Colton
Some men are very entertaining for a first interview, but after that they are exhausted, and run out; on a second meeting we shall find them flat and monotonous; like hand-organs, we have heard all their tunes.

Charles Caleb Colton
Men pursue riches under the idea that their possession will set them at ease, and above the world. But the law of association often makes those who begin by loving gold as a servant finish by becoming themselves its slaves; and independence without wealth is at least as common as wealth without independence.

Charles Caleb Colton
We submit to the society of those that can inform us, but we seek the society of those whom we can inform. And men of genius ought not to be chagrined if they see themselves neglected. For when we communicate knowledge, we are raised in our own estimation; but when we receive it, we are lowered.

Charles Caleb Colton