Charles Caleb Colton - Truth Quotes

22 Sourced Quotes

View all Charles Caleb Colton Quotes
Many speak the truth when they say that they despise riches, but they mean the riches possessed by others.

Charles Caleb Colton
There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise.

Charles Caleb Colton
It is not so difficult a task to plant new truths, as to root out old errors; for there is this paradox in men, they run after that which is new, but are prejudiced in favor of that which is old.

Charles Caleb Colton
For all the practical purposes of life, truth might as well be in a prison as in the folio of a schoolman; and those who release her from her cobwebbed shelf and teach her to live with men have the merit of liberating, if not of discovering, her.

Charles Caleb Colton
The temple of truth is built indeed of stones of crystal, but, inasmuch as men have been concerned in rearing it, it has been consolidated by a cement composed of baser materials.

Charles Caleb Colton
Perhaps that is nearly the perfection of good writing which is original, but whose truth alone prevents the reader from suspecting that it is so; and which effects that for knowledge which the lens effects for the sunbeam, when it condenses its brightness in order to increase its force.

Charles Caleb Colton
Falsehood, like a drawing in perspective, will not bear to be examined in every point of view, because it is a good imitation of truth, as a perspective is of the reality, only in one. But truth, like that reality of which the perspective is the representation, will bear to be scrutinized in all points of view, and though examined under every situation, is one and the same.

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
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
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
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
The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility.

Charles Caleb Colton
Analogy, although it is not infallible, is yet that telescope of the mind by which it is marvellously assisted in the discovery of both physical and moral truth.

Charles Caleb Colton
The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth; all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing.

Charles Caleb Colton
Truth can hardly be expected to adapt herself to the crooked policy and wily sinuosities of worldly affairs; for truth, like light, travels only in straight lines.

Charles Caleb Colton
It is a mortifying truth, and ought to teach the wisest of us humility, that many of the most valuable discoveries have been the result of chance rather than of contemplation, and of accident rather than of design.

Charles Caleb Colton
Professors in every branch of the sciences, prefer their own theories to truth: the reason is that their theories are private property, but truth is common stock.

Charles Caleb Colton
The interests of society often render it expedient not to utter the whole truth, the interests of science never: for in this field we have much more to fear from the deficiency of truth than from its abundance.

Charles Caleb Colton
It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge. Mal-information is more hopeless than non-information; for error is always more busy than ignorance. Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase. Ignorance is contented to stand still with her back to the truth; but error is more presumptuous, and proceeds in the same direction. Ignorance has no light, but error follows a false one. The consequence is, that error, when she retraces her footsteps, has further to go, before she can arrive at the truth, than ignorance.

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
Falsehood is never so successful as when she baits her hook with truth, and no opinions so fatally mislead us as those that are not wholly wrong, as no watches so effectively deceive the wearer as those that are sometimes right.

Charles Caleb Colton
Falsehood is often rocked by truth, but she soon outgrows her cradle and discards her nurse.

Charles Caleb Colton