Charles Caleb Colton Quotes
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We often pretend to fear what we really despise, and more often despise what we really fear.
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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.
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The excess of our youth are checks written against our age and they are payable with interest thirty years later.
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Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in their actions.
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If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.
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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.
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Life isn't like a book. Life isn't logical or sensible or orderly. Life is a mess most of the time. And theology must be lived in the midst of that mess.
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The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility.
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We own almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed.
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The present time has one advantage over every other - it is our own.
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We ask advice, but we mean approbation.
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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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No company is preferable to bad. We are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.
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Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us - never cease to instruct - never cloy.
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When millions applaud you seriously ask yourself what harm you have done; and when they disapprove you, what good.
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Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.
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Deliberate with caution, but act with decision; and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.
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Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route.
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Pedantry prides herself on being wrong by rules; while common sense is contented to be right, without them.
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True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.
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Pedantry crams our heads with learned lumber, and takes out our brains to make room for it.
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Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.
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Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores.
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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.