110+ Charles Caleb Colton Quotes On Bible, Inspirational And Reflection

Charles Caleb Colton was an English writer, cleric and collector. He is best known for his witty epigrams and aphorisms, such as “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” and “We are no more than tenants for life”. He was also a prominent figure in the English literary world of the early 19th century. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Charles Caleb Colton on leadership, love, life.

Top 10 Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

1. True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.
2. Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship - never.
3. The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum.
4. The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read.
5. None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them; such persons covet secrets as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation.
6. Let those who would affect singularity with success first determine to be very virtuous, and they will be sure to be very singular.
7. Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.
8. Atheism is a system which can communicate neither warmth nor illumination, except from those fagots which your mistaken zeal has lighted up for its destruction.
9. No man is wise enough, or good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.
10. Money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed. Health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied.

Charles Caleb Colton Short Quotes

• There are some frauds so well conducted that it would be stupidity not to be deceived by them.
• The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves.
• Honor is unstable and seldom the same; for she feeds upon opinion, and is as fickle as her food.
• None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.
• Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.
• Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase.
• We hate some persons because we do not know them; and will not know them because we hate them.
• Bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret.
• Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and hell a fable.
• Death is the only sovereign whom no partiality can warp, and no price corrupt.

Charles Caleb Colton Quotes About Love

Happiness ... leads none of us by the same route. — Charles Caleb Colton

Love is a volcano, the crater of which no wise man will approach too nearly, lest ... he should be swallowed up. — Charles Caleb Colton

Vanity finds in self-love so powerful an ally that it storms, as it were, by a coup de main,, the citadel of our heads, where, having blinded the two watchmen, it readily descends into the heart. — Charles Caleb Colton

Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride. — Charles Caleb Colton

The most notorious swindler has not assumed so many names as self-love, nor is so much ashamed of his own. She calls herself patriotism, when at the same time she is rejoicing at just as much calamity to her native country as will introduce herself into power, and expel her rivals. — Charles Caleb Colton

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. — Charles Caleb Colton

Love may exist without jealousy, although this is rare: but jealousy may exist without love, and this is common; for jealousy can feed on that which is bitter no less than on that which is sweet, and is sustained by pride as often as by affection. — Charles Caleb Colton

Self-denial is often the sacrifice of one sort of self-love for another. — Charles Caleb Colton

Love is an alliance of friendship and animalism; if the former predominates it is passion exalted and refined; if the latter, gross and sensual. — Charles Caleb Colton

As that gallant can best affect a pretended passion for one woman who has no true love for another, so he that has no real esteem for any of the virtues can best assume the appearance of them all. — Charles Caleb Colton

Charles Caleb Colton Quotes About Life

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. — Charles Caleb Colton

Some are cursed with the fullness of satiety; and how can they bear the ills of life when its very pleasures fatigue them? — Charles Caleb Colton

Life isn't like a book. Life isn't logical or sensible or orderly. Life is a mess most of the time. And theology must be lived in the midst of that mess. — Charles Caleb Colton

Faith and works are necessary to our spiritual life as Christians, as soul and body are to our natural life as men; for faith is the soul of religion, and works the body. — Charles Caleb Colton

It is astonishing how much more anxious people are to lengthen life than to improve it; and as misers often lose large sums of money in attempting to make more, so do hypochondriacs squander large sums of time in search of nostrums by which they vainly hope they may get more time to squander. — Charles Caleb Colton

Purity lives and derives its life solely from the Spirit of God. — Charles Caleb Colton

The two most precious things this side of the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other. — Charles Caleb Colton

Evils in the journey of life are like the hills which alarm travelers upon their road; they both appear great at a distance, but when we approach them we find that they are far less insurmountable than we had conceived. — Charles Caleb Colton

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. — Charles Caleb Colton

There are three modes of bearing the ills of life, by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion. — Charles Caleb Colton

Charles Caleb Colton Quotes About Inspirational

Imitation is the highest form of flattery. — Charles Caleb Colton

All adverse and depressing influences can be overcome, not by fighting, by by rising above them. — Charles Caleb Colton

Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together. — Charles Caleb Colton

There is this paradox in fear: he is most likely to inspire it in others who has none himself! — 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

Our minds are as different as our faces. We are all traveling to one destination: happiness, but few are going by the same road. — Charles Caleb Colton

Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it; anything but live for it. — Charles Caleb Colton

Charles Caleb Colton Quotes About Wit

There is more jealousy between rival wits than rival beauties, for vanity has no sex. But in both cases there must be pretensions, or there will be no jealousy. — Charles Caleb Colton

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. — Charles Caleb Colton

There were moments of despondency when Shakespeare thought himself no poet, and Raphael no painter; when the greatest wits have doubted the excellence of their happiest efforts. — Charles Caleb Colton

Antithesis may be the blossom of wit, but it will never arrive at maturity unless sound sense be the trunk and truth the root. — Charles Caleb Colton

Wit may do very well for a mistress, but [I] should prefer reason for a wife. — Charles Caleb Colton

Reply to wit with gravity, and to gravity with wit. — Charles Caleb Colton

Memory is the friend of wit, but the treacherous ally of invention; there are many books that owe their success to two things; good memory of those who write them, and the bad memory of those who read them — Charles Caleb Colton

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

Wit in women is a jewel, which, unlike all others, borrows lustre from its setting, rather than bestows it; since nothing is so easy as to fancy a very beautiful woman extremely witty. — Charles Caleb Colton

Charles Caleb Colton Quotes About True

To sentence a man of true genius, to the drudgery of a school is to put a racehorse on a treadmill. — Charles Caleb Colton

The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end. — Charles Caleb Colton

Knowledge is two-fold, and consists not only in an affirmation of what is true, but in the negation of that which is false. — Charles Caleb Colton

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

The true motives of our actions, like the real pipes of an organ, are usually concealed; but the gilded and hollow pretext is pompously placed in the front for show. — Charles Caleb Colton

True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander. — Charles Caleb Colton

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. — Charles Caleb Colton

Style is indeed the valet of genius, and an able one too; but as the true gentleman will appear, even in rags, so true genius will shine, even through the coarsest style. — Charles Caleb Colton

True friendship is like sound health, the value of it is seldom known until it be lost. — Charles Caleb Colton

That is true beauty which has not only a substance, but a spirit; a beauty that we must intimately know, justly to appreciate. — Charles Caleb Colton

Charles Caleb Colton Quotes About Friends

Friendship, of itself a holy tie, is made more sacred by adversity. — Charles Caleb Colton

If you want enemies, excel others; if you want friends, let others excel you. — Charles Caleb Colton

Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books. — Charles Caleb Colton

The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is humility. — Charles Caleb Colton

He that openly tells, his friends all that he thinks of them, must expect that they will secretly tell his enemies much that they do not think of him. — Charles Caleb Colton

Time, the cradle of hope.... Wisdom walks before it, opportunity with it, and repentance behind it: he that has made it his friend will have little to fear from his enemies, but he that has made it his enemy will have little to hope from his friends. — Charles Caleb Colton

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

If a cause be good, the most violent attack of its enemies will not injure it so much as an injudicious defence of it by its friends. — Charles Caleb Colton

It is always safe to learn, even from our enemies; seldom safe to venture to instruct, even our friends. — Charles Caleb Colton

Our very best friends have a tincture of jealousy even in their friendship; and when they hear us praised by others, will ascribe it to sinister and interested motives if they can. — Charles Caleb Colton

Charles Caleb Colton Quotes About Happiness

Anguish of mind has driven thousands to suicide; anguish of body, none. This proves that the health of the mind is of far more consequence to our happiness than the health of the body, although both are deserving of much more attention than either of them receive. — Charles Caleb Colton

The greatest and most amiable privilege which the rich enjoy over the poor is that which they exercise the least--the privilege of making others happy. — Charles Caleb Colton

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

If sensuality be our only happiness we ought to envy the brutes, for instinct is a surer, shorter, safer guide to such happiness than reason. — Charles Caleb Colton

Pride requires very costly food-its keeper's happiness. — Charles Caleb Colton

The greatest miracle that the Almighty could perform would be to make a bad man happy, even in heaven; he must unparadise that blessed place to accomplish it. In its primary signification, all vice--that is, all excess--brings its own punishment even here. — Charles Caleb Colton

Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice makes concerning wealth. She begins by accumulating power as a means to happiness, and she finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end. — Charles Caleb Colton

We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine, but if defer tasting them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age. — Charles Caleb Colton

The man of pleasure, by a vain attempt to be more happy than any man can be, is often more miserable than most men are. — Charles Caleb Colton

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. — Charles Caleb Colton

Charles Caleb Colton Quotes About Wise

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. — Charles Caleb Colton

Levity is often less foolish and gravity less wise than each of them appears. — Charles Caleb Colton

We must be careful how we flatter fools too little, or wise men too much, for the flatterer must act the very reverse of the physician, and administer the strongest dose only to the weakest patient. — Charles Caleb Colton

Logic is a large drawer, containing some useful instruments, and many more that are superfluous. A wise man will look into it for two purposes, to avail himself of those instruments that are really useful, and to admire the ingenuity with which those that are not so, are assorted and arranged. — Charles Caleb Colton

Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish. — Charles Caleb Colton

The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world. — Charles Caleb Colton

Any one can give advice, such as it is, but only a wise man knows how to profit by it. — Charles Caleb Colton

If martyrdom is now on the decline, it is not because martyrs are less zealous, but because martyr-mongers are more wise. The light of intellect has put out the fire of persecution, as other fires are observed to smoulder before the light of the same. — Charles Caleb Colton

A wise man may be duped as well as a fool; but the fool publishes the triumph of his deceiver; the wise man is silent, and denies that triumph to an enemy which he would hardly concede to a friend; a triumph that proclaims his own defeat. — Charles Caleb Colton

It is better to have wisdom without learning than learning without wisdom. — Charles Caleb Colton

Charles Caleb Colton Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

Genius, when employed in works whose tendency it is to demoralize and to degrade us, should be contemplated with abhorrence rather than with admiration; such a monument of its power, may indeed be stamped with immortality, but like the Coliseum at Rome, we deplore its magnificence because we detest the purposes for which it was designed. — Charles Caleb Colton

If our eloquence be directed above the heads of our hearers, we shall do no execution. By pointing our arguments low, we stand a chance of hitting their hearts as well as their heads. In addressing angels, we could hardly raise our eloquence too high; but we must remember that men are not angels. — Charles Caleb Colton

In the pursuit of knowledge, follow it wherever it is to be found; like fern, it is the produce of all climates, and like coin, its circulation is not restricted to any particular class. — Charles Caleb Colton

Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live. — Charles Caleb Colton

It is better to meet danger than to wait for it. He that is on a lee shore, and foresees a hurricane, stands out to sea and encounters a storm to avoid a shipwreck. — Charles Caleb Colton

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

If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; if you would know, and not be known, live in a city. — Charles Caleb Colton

Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past, even while we attempt to define it. — Charles Caleb Colton

She is deceitful as the calm that precedes the hurricane, smooth as the water on the verge of the cataract, and beautiful as the rainbow, that smiling daughter of the storm; but, like the mirage in the desert, she tantalizes us with a delusion that distance creates, and that contiguity destroys. — Charles Caleb Colton

Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of tricks and duplicity than straight forward and simple integrity in another. — Charles Caleb Colton

Insults are engendered from vulgar minds, like toadstools from a dunghill. — Charles Caleb Colton

It is the briefest yet wisest maxim which tells us to meddle not. — Charles Caleb Colton

The consequences of things are not always proportionate to the apparent magnitude of those events that have produced them. Thus the American Revolution, from which little was expected, produced much; but the French Revolution, from which much was expected, produced little. — Charles Caleb Colton

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. — Charles Caleb Colton

Villainy that is vigilant will be an overmatch for virtue, if she slumber at her post. — Charles Caleb Colton

As the gout seems privileged to attack the bodies of the wealthy, so ennui seems to exert a similar prerogative over their minds. — Charles Caleb Colton

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. — Charles Caleb Colton

We own almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed. — Charles Caleb Colton

Great minds must be ready not only to take opportunities, but to make them. — Charles Caleb Colton

Men are born with two eyes, but only one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say. — Charles Caleb Colton

Man, if he compare himself with all that he can see, is at the zenith of power; but if he compare himself with all that he can conceive, he is at the nadir of weakness. — Charles Caleb Colton

If Satan ever laughs, it must be at hypocrites; they are the greatest dupes he has. — Charles Caleb Colton

Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance. — Charles Caleb Colton

It is a mistake, that a lust for power is the mark of a great mind; for even the weakest have been captivated by it; and for minds of the highest order, it has no charms. — Charles Caleb Colton

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. — Charles Caleb Colton

When millions applaud you seriously ask yourself what harm you have done; and when they disapprove you, what good. — Charles Caleb Colton

In civil jurisprudence it too often happens that there is so much law, that there is no room for justice, and that the claimant expires of wrong in the midst of right, as mariners die of thirst in the midst of water. — Charles Caleb Colton

We often pretend to fear what we really despise, and more often despise what we really fear. — Charles Caleb Colton

Most plagiarists, like the drone, have neither taste to select, industry to acquire, nor skill to improve, but impudently pilfer the honey ready prepared, from the hive. — Charles Caleb Colton

A hug is worth a thousand words. — Charles Caleb Colton

Honesty is not only the deepest policy, but the highest wisdom; since, however difficult it may be for integrity to get on, it is a thousand times more difficult for knavery to get off; and no error is more fatal than that of those who think that Virtue has no other reward because they have heard that she is her own. — Charles Caleb Colton

Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom. — Charles Caleb Colton

Constant success shows us but one side of the world; adversity brings out the reverse of the picture. — Charles Caleb Colton

Ambition is to the mind what the cap is to the falcon; it blinds us first, and then compels us to tower by reason of our blindness. — Charles Caleb Colton

The excess of our youth are checks written against our age and they are payable with interest thirty years later. — Charles Caleb Colton

Brutes leave ingratitude to man. — Charles Caleb Colton

Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say. — Charles Caleb Colton

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. — Charles Caleb Colton

In all societies, it is advisable to associate if possible with the highest; not that the highest are always the best, but because, if disgusted there, we can descend at any time; but if we begin with the lowest, to ascend is impossible. — Charles Caleb Colton

It is easier to pretend to be what you are not than to hide what you really are; but he that can accomplish both has little to learn in hypocrisy. — Charles Caleb Colton

Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease. — Charles Caleb Colton

Mystery magnifies danger as the fog the sun. — Charles Caleb Colton

It is much easier to ruin a man of principle than a man of none, for he may be ruined through his scruples. Knavery is supple and can bend; but honesty is firm and upright, and yields not. — Charles Caleb Colton

Where we cannot invent, we may at least improve. — Charles Caleb Colton

Gold is worshipped in all climates, without a single temple, and by all classes, without a single hypocrite. — Charles Caleb Colton

Expect not praise without envy until you are dead. — Charles Caleb Colton

Grant graciously what you cannot refuse safely and conciliate those you cannot conquer. — Charles Caleb Colton

Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm. — Charles Caleb Colton

Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness when bequeathed by those who, even alive, would part with nothing. — Charles Caleb Colton

A fool is often as dangerous to deal with as a knave, and always more incorrigible. — Charles Caleb Colton

Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind. — Charles Caleb Colton

No men deserve the title of infidels so little as those to whom it has been usually applied; let any of those who renounce Christianity, write fairly down in a book all the absurdities that they believe instead of it, and they will find that it requires more faith to reject Christianity than to embrace it. — Charles Caleb Colton

Patience is the support of weakness; impatience the ruin of strength. — Charles Caleb Colton

Of all the marvelous works of God, perhaps the one angels view with the most supreme astonishment, is a proud man. — Charles Caleb Colton

Law and equity are two things which God has joined, but which man has put asunder. — Charles Caleb Colton

We devote the activity of our youth to revelry and the decrepitude of our old age to repentance: and we finish the farce by bequeathing our dead bodies to the chancel, which when living, we interdicted from the church. — Charles Caleb Colton

Injuries accompanied with insults are never forgiven: all men, on these occasions, are good haters, and lay out their revenge at compound interest. — Charles Caleb Colton

Theories are private property, but truth is common stock. — Charles Caleb Colton

From its very inaction, idleness ultimately becomes the most active cause of evil; as a palsy is more to be dreaded than a fever. The Turks have a proverb which says that the devil tempts all other men, but that idle men tempt the devil. — Charles Caleb Colton

Envy is the coward side of Hate, And all her ways are bleak and desolate. — Charles Caleb Colton

A Christian builds his fortitude on a better foundation than stoicism; he is pleased with every thing that happens, because he knows it could not happen unless it first pleased God, and that which pleases Him must be best. — Charles Caleb Colton

Were we as eloquent as angels we still would please people much more by listening rather than talking. — Charles Caleb Colton

Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores. — Charles Caleb Colton

When we fail our pride supports us and when we succeed, it betrays us. — Charles Caleb Colton

Life Lessons by Charles Caleb Colton

1. Charles Caleb Colton was an English writer who believed in the importance of hard work and perseverance. He taught that success comes from dedication and sacrifice, and that it is important to never give up, even in the face of adversity. He also believed in the power of friendship and the importance of being kind and generous to others.