Charles Caleb Colton Quotes
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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.
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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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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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Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores.
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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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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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Men's arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.
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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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We own almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed.
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There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.
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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 first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.
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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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Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
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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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Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity, than straightforward and simple integrity in another.
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Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in their actions.
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Deliberate with caution, but act with decision; and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.
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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.
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Many speak the truth when they say that they despise riches, but they mean the riches possessed by others.
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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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We ask advice, but we mean approbation.
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Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.
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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.