Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

• When we fail our pride supports us and when we succeed, it betrays us.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• 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.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• The greatest genius is never so great as when it is chastised and subdued by the highest reason.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Topics in Genius

• He that is good, will infallibly become better, and he that is bad, will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue and time are three things that never stand still.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• Genius, in one respect, is like gold; numbers of persons are constantly writing about both, who have neither.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Topics in Genius

• A man who knows the world will not only make the most of everything he does know, but of many things that he does not know; and will gain more credit by his adroit mode of hiding his ignorance than the pendant by his awkward attempt to exhibit his erudition.

  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

• The profoundly wise do not declaim against superficial knowledge in others, as much as the profoundly ignorant.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• Subtract from the great man all that he owes to opportunity, all that he owes to chance, and all that he gained by the wisdom of his friends and the folly of his enemies, and the giant will often be seen to be a pygmy.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• We hate some persons because we do not know them; and will not know them because we hate them.

  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

• Contemporaries appreciate the man rather than his merit; posterity will regard the merit rather than the man.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• 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.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• We believe that the applause of silence is the only kind that counts.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• The present time has one advantage over every other – it is our own.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• 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.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• Reply to wit with gravity, and to gravity with wit.

  Charles Caleb Colton

Charles Caleb Colton (187)

Birth:	1780
Death:	1832
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Writer

About

Charles Caleb Colton was an English writer. He was educated at Eton and King's College, graduating with a B.A. in 1801 and an M.A. Colton's books, including collections of epigrammatic aphorisms and short essays on conduct, though now almost forgotten, had a phenomenal popularity in their day. Toward the end of 1820, Colton published Lacon, or Many Things in Few Words, addressed to those who think., in a small cheap edition.

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