Charles Caleb Colton (1780–1832) was an English cleric, aphorist, writer, and collector.
Born possibly in Shrivenham, Berkshire, Colton was educated at Eton College and King’s College, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1801 and a Master of Arts in 1804. He served as vicar of Kew and Petersham 1812–28 before fleeing England to dodge creditors.
Colton traveled all over the United States for two years and settled in Paris. There, he became an art collector, and wine collector, but lost much of his fortune in gambling. Following the discovery of an illness that necessitated surgery, Colton killed himself instead of undergoing the procedure.
Colton’s literary work includes compendiums of epigrammatic aphorisms and short essays on behavior and manners. His Lacon, or Many Things in Few Words (1820, 1822) gained full acceptance. He also published The Conflagration of Moscow (1826,) a work on Napoleon, and An Ode on the Death of Lord Byron (1831.) A 600 line-poem called ‘Modern Antiquity’ was never published.
One of Colton’s most famous quotes is, “Imitation is the sincerest [form] of flattery.”
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Charles Caleb Colton
There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Prudence
The excess of our youth are checks written against our age and they are payable with interest thirty years later.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Time, Youth, Age
Most plagiarists, like the drone, have not the taste to select, the industry to acquire, nor the skill to improve, but impudently pilfer the honey ready prepared, from the hive.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Plagiarism
When in reading we meet with any maxim that may be of use, we should take it for our own, and make an immediate application of it, as we would of the advice of a friend whom we have purposely consulted.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Reading
Despotism can no more exist in a nation until the liberty of the press be destroyed, than the night can happen before the sun is set.
—Charles Caleb Colton
We ought not to be over-anxious to encourage innovation, in cases of doubtful improvement, for an old system must ever have two advantages over a new one; it is established and it is understood.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Change, Progress
Professors in every branch of the sciences, prefer their own theories to truth: the reason is that their theories are private property, but truth is common stock.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Truth, Property
Pity is a thing often vowed, seldom felt; hatred is a thing often felt, seldom avowed.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Sympathy
Analogy, although it is not infallible, is yet that telescope of the mind by which it is marvelously assisted in the discovery of both physical and moral truth.
—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
Topics: Greatness
Death and the cross are the two great levellers; kings and their subjects, masters and slaves, find a common level in two places—at the foot of the cross, and in the silence of the grave.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Equality
Of all marvelous things, perhaps there is nothing that angels behold with such supreme astonishment as a proud man.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Pride
True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.
—Charles Caleb Colton
A windmill is eternally at work to accomplish one end, although it shifts with every variation of the weathercock, and assumes ten different positions in a day.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Aspirations, Goals, Work
If rich, it is easy enough to conceal our wealth; but if poor, it is not quite so easy to conceal our poverty. We shall find that it is less difficult to hide a thousand guineas than one hole in our coat.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Poverty
Metaphysicians have been learning their lesson for the last four thousand years; and it is now high time that they should begin to teach us something: Can any of the tribe inform us why all the operations of the mind are carried on with undiminished strength and activity in dreams, except the judgment, which alone is suspended and dormant?
—Charles Caleb Colton
He that swells in prosperity will be sure to shrink in adversity.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Prosperity
We strive as hard to hide our hearts from ourselves as from others, and always with more success; for in deciding upon our own case we are both judge, jury, and executioner, and where sophistry cannot overcome the first, or flattery the second, self-love is always ready to defeat the sentence by bribing the third.
—Charles Caleb Colton
There are two principles of established acceptance in morals; first, that self-interest is the mainspring of all of our actions, and secondly, that utility is the test of their value.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Morals
Some men possess means that are great, but fritter them away in the execution of conceptions that are little; others, who can form great conceptions, attempt to carry them into execution with little means. These two descriptions of men might succeed if united, but kept asunder, both fail. It is a rare thing to find a combination of great means and of great conceptions in one mind.
—Charles Caleb Colton
In politics, as in religion, we have less charity for those who believe the half of our creed, than for those who deny the whole of it.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Religion
A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Genius
He that has no resources of mind, is more to be pitied than he who is in want of necessaries for the body; to be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others, bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Self-reliance, Confidence, Mind, Happiness
None are so seldom found alone, and are so soon tired of their own company as those coxcombs who are on the best terms with themselves.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Conceit
Rats and conquerors must expect no mercy in misfortune.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Misfortune
Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Difficulty, Authors & Writing
Let any of those who renounce Christianity, write fairly down in a book all the absurdities they believe instead of it, and they will find it requires more faith to reject Christianity than to embrace it.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Words are but the signs and counters of knowledge, and their currency should be strictly regulated by the capital which they represent.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Words
All adverse and depressing influences can be overcome, not by fighting, but by rising above them.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Adversity
There is this difference between happiness and wisdom, that he that thinks himself the happiest man really is so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Joy, Thought, Wisdom, Thoughts, Thinking, Home, Happiness
Fame is an undertaker that pays but little attention to the living, but bedizens the dead, furnishes out their funerals, and follows them to the grave.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Fame
He that places himself neither higher nor lower than he ought to do exercises the truest humility.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Humility
Repartee is perfect, when it effects its purpose with a double edge. Repartee is the highest order of wit, as it bespeaks the coolest yet quickest exercise of genius at a moment when the passions are roused.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Conversation
Of all the passions, jealousy is that which exacts the hardest service, and pays the bitterest wages. Its service is, to watch the success of our enemy; its wages to be sure of it.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Jealousy
The plainest man that can convince a woman that he is really in love with her, has done more to make her in love with him than the handsomest man, if he can produce no such conviction. For the love of woman is a shoot, not a seed, and flourishes most vigorously only when ingrafted on that love which is rooted in the breast of another.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Love
A few drops of oil will set the political machine at work, when a ton of vinegar would only corrode the wheels and canker the movements.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Brutes leave ingratitude to man.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Ingratitude
It is an easy and vulgar thing to please the mob, and not a very arduous task to astonish them; but to benefit and improve them is a work fraught with difficulty, and teeming with danger.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Most females will forgive a liberty, rather than a slight; and if any woman were to hang a man for stealing her picture, although it were set in gold, it would be a new case in law; but if he carried off the setting, and left the portrait, I would not answer for his safety.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Woman
Novels may teach us as wholesome a moral as the pulpit. There are “sermons in stones,” in healthy books, and “good in everything.”
—Charles Caleb Colton
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