Charles Caleb Colton Quotes
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Our incomes should be like our shoes; if too small, they will gall and pinch us; but if too large, they will cause us to stumble and to trip.
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The consequences of things are not always proportionate to the apparent magnitude of those events that have produced them. Thus the American Revolution, from which little was expected, produced much; but the French Revolution, from which much was expected, produced little.
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To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.
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Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live.
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When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
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An elegant writer has observed, that wit may do very well for a mistress, but that he should prefer reason for a wife.
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If a horse has four legs, and I'm riding it, I think I can win.
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It is better to meet danger than to wait for it. He that is on a lee shore, and foresees a hurricane, stands out to sea and encounters a storm to avoid a shipwreck.
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True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.
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Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.
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A feast is more fatal to love than a fast, and a surfeit than a starvation.
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Avarice has ruined more souls than extravagance.
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He that is good, will infallibly become better, and he that is bad, will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue and time are three things that never stand still.
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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.
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War kills men, and men deplore the loss; but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies.
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Of present fame think little, and of future less; the praises that we receive after we are buried, like the flowers that are strewed over our grave, may be gratifying to the living, but they are nothing to the dead.
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To write what is worth publishing, to find honest people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it, are the three great difficulties in being an author.
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Those who visit foreign nations, but associate only with their own country-men, change their climate, but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with traveled bodies, but untravelled minds.
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Mystery is not profoundness.
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Knowledge is two-fold, and consists not only in an affirmation of what is true, but in the negation of that which is false.
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Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance.
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Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.
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Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship - never.
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When millions applaud you seriously ask yourself what harm you have done; and when they disapprove you, what good.