He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Belief
Antiquity is enjoyed not by the ancients who lived in the infancy of things, but by us who live in their maturity.
—Charles Caleb Colton
The science of legislation is like that of medicine in one respect, viz.: that it is far more easy to point out what will do harm, than what will do good.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Law
As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Hypocrisy, Tolerance
He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool; since the most absurd doctrines are not without such evidence as martyrdom can produce. A martyr, therefore, by the mere act of suffering, can prove nothing but his own faith.
—Charles Caleb Colton
The gamester, if he die a martyr to his profession, is doubly ruined; he adds his soul to every other loss, and by the act of suicide renounces earth to forfeit heaven.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Gambling
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
Reply with wit to gravity, and with gravity to wit.—Make a full concession to your adversary; give him every credit for the arguments you know you can answer, and slur over those you feel you cannot.—But above all, if lie have the privilege of making his reply, take especial care that the strongest thing you have to urge be the last.
—Charles Caleb Colton
The slightest sorrow for sin is sufficient if it produce amendment, and the greatest insufficient if it do not.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Repentance
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: Property, Truth
Accustom yourself to submit on every occasion to a small present evil, to obtain a greater distant good. This will give decision, tone, and energy to the mind, which, thus disciplined, will often reap victory from defeat, and honor from repulse.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Forethought
Custom is the law of one description of fools, and fashion of another; but the two parties often clash, for precedent is the legislator of the first, and novelty of the last.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Custom, Fashion
The seeds of repentance are sown in youth by pleasure, but the harvest is reaped in age by suffering.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Pleasure
He that will often put eternity and the world before him, and will dare to look steadfastly at both of them, will find that the more he contemplates them, the former will grow greater and the latter less.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Eternity
Short as life is, some find it long enough to outlive their characters, their constitutions and their estates.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Aging
It is with nations as with individuals, those who know the least of others think the highest of themselves; for the whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Pride, Ignorance
I have somewhere seen it observed that we should make the same use of a book that the bee does of a flower; she steals sweets from it, but does not injure it.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Quotations
It is curious that we pay statesmen for what they say, not for what they do, and judge them from what they do, not from what they say.—Hence they have one code of maxims for professions, and another for practice, and make up their consciences as the Neapolitans do their beds, with one set of furniture for show, and another for use.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Oratory is the huffing and blustering spoiled child of a semi-barbarous age.—The press is the foe of rhetoric, but the friend of reason; and the art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and readers wise enough to read.
—Charles Caleb Colton
No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Virtue
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
Virtue without talent is a coat of mail without a sword; it may indeed defend the wearer, but will not enable him to protect his friend.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Virtue
We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves; it is civil war.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Being Ourselves, Self-Discovery
An enslaved press is doubly fatal; it not only takes away the true light, for in that case we might stand still, but it sets up a false one that decoys us to our destruction.
—Charles Caleb Colton
The good make a better bargain, and the bad a worse, than is usually supposed; for the rewards of the one, and the punishments of the other not unfrequently begin on this side of the grave; for vice has more martyrs than virtue; and it often happens that men suffer more to be damned than to be saved.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Vice
Subtlety will sometimes give safety, no less than strength; and minuteness has sometimes escaped, where magnitude would have been crushed. The little animal that kills the boa is formidable chiefly from its insignificance, which is incompressible by the folds of its antagonist.
—Charles Caleb Colton
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
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 reason why great men meet with so little pity or attachment in adversity, would seem to be this: the friends of a great man were made by his fortune, his enemies by himself, and revenge is a much more punctual paymaster than gratitude.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Greatness, Revenge
We follow the world in approving others; we go far before it in approving ourselves.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Richard Hooker English Theologian, Political Theorist
- Henri Nouwen Dutch Catholic Priest
- Thomas Aquinas Italian Catholic Priest
- Sam Shoemaker American Clergyman
- Jerome Greek Priest
- Desmond Tutu South African Clergyman
- Benjamin Whichcote British Religious Figure
- John Vianney French Catholic Priest
- E. Stanley Jones American Missionary
- Virginia Woolf English Novelist
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