Famous Quotes

Quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

• Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.
• Constant success shows us but one side of the world adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.
• Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console.
• Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.
• Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
• Friendship often ends in love but love in friendship - never.
• Friendship, of itself a holy tie, is made more sacred by adversity.
• 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.
• He who studies books alone will know how things ought to be, and he who studies men will know how they are.
• If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself all that runs over will be yours.
• In life we shall find many men that are great, and some that are good, but very few men that are both great and good.
• In religion as in politics it so happens that we have less charity for those who believe half our creed, than for those who deny the whole of it.
• Knowledge is two-fold, and consists not only in an affirmation of what is true, but in the negation of that which is false.
• Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride.
• Many speak the truth when they say that they despise riches, but they mean the riches possessed by others.
• Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.
• Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.
• Men's arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.
• Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance.
• Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.
• Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.
• 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.
• Of present fame think little, and of future less the praises that we receive after we are buried, like the flowers that are strewed over our grave, may be gratifying to the living, but they are nothing to the dead.
• Patience is the support of weakness impatience the ruin of strength.
• Physical courage, which despises all danger, will make a man brave in one way and moral courage, which despises all opinion, will make a man brave in another.
• Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.
• That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.
• The excess of our youth are checks written against our age and they are payable with interest thirty years later.
• The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.
• The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility.
• The society of dead authors has this advantage over that of the living: they never flatter us to our faces, nor slander us behind our backs, nor intrude upon our privacy, nor quit their shelves until we take them down.
• There are three modes of bearing the ills of life, by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion.
• There are two way of establishing a reputation, one to be praised by honest people and the other to be accused by rogues. It is best, however, to secure the first one, because it will always be accompanied by the latter.
• There is this difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man, really is so but he that thinks himself the wisest, is generally the greatest fool.
• Those who visit foreign nations, but associate only with their own country-men, change their climate, but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with traveled bodies, but untravelled minds.
• To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread.
• To dare to live alone is the rarest courage since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.
• True friendship is like sound health the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.
• War kills men, and men deplore the loss but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies.