Charles Caleb Colton Quotes
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Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish.
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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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The two most precious things this side of the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other.
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Mystery is not profoundness.
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In religion as in politics it so happens that we have less charity for those who believe half our creed, than for those who deny the whole of it.
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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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Drunkenness is the vice of a good constitution or of a bad memory-of a constitution so treacherously good that it never bends till it breaks; or of a memory that recollects the pleasures of getting intoxicated, but forgets the pains of getting sober.
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Patience is the support of weakness; impatience the ruin of strength.
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Friendship, of itself a holy tie, is made more sacred by adversity.
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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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Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
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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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Instead of exhibiting talent in the hope that the world would forgive their eccentricities, they have exhibited only their eccentricities, in the hope that the world would give them credit for talent.
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Contemporaries appreciate the person rather than their merit, posterity will regard the merit rather than the person.
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Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.
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It is always safe to learn, even from our enemies; seldom safe to venture to instruct, even our friends.
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There is this difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man, really is so; but he that thinks himself the wisest, is generally the greatest fool.
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Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase.
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He who studies books alone will know how things ought to be, and he who studies men will know how they are.
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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.
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To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread.
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The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end.
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To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it; the pains of power are real, its pleasures imaginary.
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Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.