Top 767 Quotes & Sayings by Charles Caleb Colton - Page 11

Envy ought to have no place allowed it in the hearts of people; for the goods of this present world are so vile and low that they are beneath it; and those of the future world are so vast and exalted that they are above it.

Were the life of man prolonged, he would become such a proficient in villainy, that it would become necessary again to drown or to burn the world. Earth would become an hell; for future rewards when put off to a great distance, would cease to encourage, and future punishments to alarm.

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.

He [the miser] falls down and worships the god of this world, but will have neither its pomps, its vanities nor its pleasures for his trouble.

There are three difficulties in authorship;-to write any thing worth the publishing-to find honest men to publish it -and to get sensible men to read it. Literature has now become a game; in which the Booksellers are the Kings; The Critics the Knaves; the Public, the Pack; and the poor Author, the mere table, or the Thing played upon.

He that has never suffered extreme adversity knows not the full extent of his own depravation.

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 one's enemy; its wages to be sure of it.

Fashions smile has given wit to dullness and grace to deformity, and has brought everything into vogue, by turns, but virtue.

My lowest days as a Christian have been more fulfilling and rewarding than all the days of glory in the White House.

An act by which we make one friend and one enemy is a losing game; because revenge is a much stronger principle than gratitude

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...

The integrity that lives only on opinion would starve without it.

All poets pretend to write for immortality, but the whole tribe have no objection to present pay and present praise.

Unity of opinion is indeed a glorious and desirable thing, and its circle cannot be too strong and extended, if the centre be truth; but if the centre be error, the greater the circumference, the greater the evil.

How strange it is that we of the present day are constantly praising that past age which our fathers abused, and as constantly abusing that present age, which our children will praise.

Most importantly: Don't adjust your results to build up the ego of the chief strategist. Especially if the strategist is you.

When we are in the company of sensible men, we ought to be doubly cautious of talking too much, lest we lose two good things, their good opinion and our own improvement; for what we have to say we know, but what they have to say we know not.

Those graces which from their presumed facility encourage all to attempt an imitation of them, are usually the most inimitable.

The policy that can strike only while the iron is hot will be overcome by that perseverance, which ... can make that iron hot by striking and he that can only rule the storm must yield to him who can both raise and rule it.

Those that will not permit their wealth to do any good for others. . . cut themselves off from the truest pleasure here and the highest happiness later.

Heaven may have happiness as utterly unknown to us as the gift of perfect vision would be to a man born blind. If we consider the inlets of pleasure from five senses only, we may be sure that the same Being who created us could have given us five hundred, if He had pleased.

In all countries where nature does the most, man does the least.

By paying our other debts, we are equal with all mankind; but in refusing to pay a debt of revenge, we are superior.

What is earthly happiness? that phantom of which we hear so much, and see so little; whose promises are constantly given and constantly broken, but as constantly believed; that cheats us with the sound instead of the substance, and with the blossom instead of the fruit. Like Juno, she is a goddess in pursuit, but a cloud in possession.

The science of legislation is like that of medicine in one respect: that it is far more easy to point out what will do harm than what will do good.

Repartee is perfect when it effects its purpose with a double edge. It is the highest order of wit, as it indicates the coolest yet quickest exercise of genius, at a moment when the passions are roused.

Secrecy is the soul of all great designs.

This world cannot explain its own difficulties without the assistance of another.

Hypocrites act by virtue.... They frame many counterfeits of her, with which they make an ostentatious parade, in all public assemblies, and processions; but the original of what they counterfeit, and which may indeed be said to have fallen from heaven, they produce so seldom, that it is cankered by the rust of sloth, and useless from non-application.

They that are loudest in their threats are the weakest in the execution of them. It is probable that he who is killed by lightning hears no noise; but the thunder-clap which follows, and which most alarms the ignorant, is the surest proof of their safety.

If we look backwards to antiquity it should be as those that are winning a race.

Some indeed there are who profess to despise all flattery, but even these are nevertheless to be flattered, by being told that they do despise it.

When all run by common consent into vice, none appear to do so.

Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow.

Living authors, therefore, are usually, bad companions. If they have not gained character, they seek to do so by methods often ridiculous, always disgusting; and if they have established a character, they are silent for fear of losing by their tongue what they have acquired by their pen--for many authors converse much more foolishly than Goldsmith, who have never written half so well.

I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself.

No one knows where he who invented the plow was born, nor where he died; yet he has done more for humanity than the whole race of heroes who have drenched the earth with blood and whose deeds have been handed down with a precision proportionate only to the mischief they wrought.

Life often presents us with a choice of evils, rather than of goods.

The upright, if he suffer calumny to move him, fears the tongue of man more than the eye of God.

There are two modes of establishing our reputation; to be praised by honest men, and to be abused by rogues.

A youth without fire is followed by an old age without experience.

Calumny crosses oceans, scales mountains and traverses deserts, with greater ease than the Scythian Abaris, and like him, rides upon a poisoned arrow.

Avarice has ruined more men than prodigality, and the blindest thoughtlessness of expenditure has not destroyed so many fortunes as the calculating but insatiable lust of accumulation.

Afflictions sent by providence melt the constancy of the noble minded, but confirm the obduracy of the vile, as the same furnace that liquefies the gold, hardens the clay Charles Caleb Colton.

Wealth is a relative thing since those who have little and want less are richer than those who have much but want more.

Where true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a pretext for a thousand.

Most of our misfortunes are more supportable than the comments of our friends upon them.

It is seldom that statesmen have the option of choosing between a good and an evil.

Vice has more martyrs than virtue; and it often happens that men suffer more to be lost than to be saved.

The science of mathematics performs more than it promises, but the science of metaphysics promises more than it performs.

Women generally consider consequences in love, seldom in resentment.

It is not so difficult a task to plant new truths, as to root out old errors; for there is this paradox in men, they run after that which is new, but are prejudiced in favor of that which is old.

Philosophy is a goddess, whose head indeed is in heaven, but whose feet are upon earth; she attempts more than she accomplishes, and promises more than she performs.

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.

We shall at all times chance upon men of recondite acquirements, but whose qualifications, from the incommunicative and inactive habits of their owners, are as utterly useless to others as though the possessors had them not.

The three great apostles of practical atheism, that make converts without persecuting, and retain them without preaching, are wealth, health and power.

For what are the triumphs of war, planned by ambition, executed by violence, and consummated by devastation? The means are the sacrifice of many, the end, the bloated aggrandizement of the few.

In order to try whether a vessel be leaky, we first prove it with water before we trust it with wine.

The young fancy that their follies are mistaken by the old for happiness. The old fancy that their gravity is mistaken by the young for wisdom.

None of us are so much praised or censured as we think.