Charles Caleb Colton - Lacon (1820)

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True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.

Charles Caleb Colton
Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship—never.

Charles Caleb Colton
The society of dead authors has this advantage over that of the living; they never flatter us to our faces, nor slander us behind our backs, nor intrude upon our privacy, nor quit their shelves until we take them down.

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
It is with diseases of the mind as with those of the body:.we are half dead before we understand our disorder, and half cured when we do.

Charles Caleb Colton
Sleep, the type of death, is also, like that which it typifies, restricted to the earth. It flies from hell and is excluded from heaven.

Charles Caleb Colton
Hypocrites act by virtue.... They frame many counterfeits of her, with which they make an ostentatious parade, in all public assemblies, and processions; but the original of what they counterfeit, and which may indeed be said to have fallen from heaven, they produce so seldom, that it is cankered by the rust of sloth, and useless from non-application.

Charles Caleb Colton
Speaking generally, no man appears great to his contemporaries, for the same reason that no man is great to his servants--both know too much of him.

Charles Caleb Colton
As in the game of billiards, the balls are constantly producing effects from mere chance, which the most skillful player could neither execute nor foresee, but which, when they do happen, serve mainly to teach him how much he has still to learn...

Charles Caleb Colton
Literature has her quacks no less than medicine, and they are divided into two classes; those who have erudition without genius, and those who have volubility without depth; we shall get second-hand sense from the one, and original nonsense from the other.

Charles Caleb Colton
Villainy that is vigilant will be an overmatch for virtue, if she slumber at her post.

Charles Caleb Colton
Beautiful as the rainbow - that smiling daughter of the storm...

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
No two things differ more than hurry and despatch. Hurry is the mark of a weak mind; despatch of a strong one.

Charles Caleb Colton
A power above all human responsibility ought to be above all human attainment.

Charles Caleb Colton
In civil jurisprudence it too often happens that there is so much law, that there is no room for justice, and that the claimant expires of wrong in the midst of right, as mariners die of thirst in the midst of water.

Charles Caleb Colton
The victims of ennui paralyze all the grosser feelings by excess, and torpify all the finer by disuse and inactivity. Disgusted with this world, and indifferent about another, they at last lay violent hands upon themselves, and assume no small credit for the sang froid with which they meet death. But, alas! such beings can scarcely be said to die, for they have never truly lived.

Charles Caleb Colton
Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.

Charles Caleb Colton
Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.

Charles Caleb Colton
From the preponderance of talent, we may always infer the soundness and vigour of the commonwealth; but from the preponderance of riches, its dotage and degeneration.

Charles Caleb Colton
Doubt is the vestibule which all must pass, before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.

Charles Caleb Colton
We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves; it is a civil war, and in all such contentions, triumphs are defeats.

Charles Caleb Colton
Some reputed saints that have been canonized ought to have been cannonaded.

Charles Caleb Colton
We are more apt to catch the vices of others than their virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.

Charles Caleb Colton
We should have a glorious conflagration, if all who cannot put fire into their works would only consent to put their works into the fire.

Charles Caleb Colton
Pedantry crams our heads with learned lumber, and takes out our brains to make room for it.

Charles Caleb Colton
Criticism is like champagne, nothing more execrable if bad, nothing more excellent if good.

Charles Caleb Colton
With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid, than which to choose; for good books are as scarce as good companions.

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
Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.

Charles Caleb Colton