Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

• Opinions, like showers, are generated in high places, but they invariably descend into lower ones, and ultimately flow down to the people as rain unto the sea.

  Charles Caleb Colton

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

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Tags in Words

• Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance.

  Charles Caleb Colton

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• 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

  Tags in Sin

• Never join with your friend when he abuses his horse or his wife, unless the one is to be sold and the other to be buried.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Tags in Foresight

• It is a mortifying truth, and ought to teach the wisest of us humility, that many of the most valuable discoveries have been the result of chance rather than of contemplation, and of accident rather than of design.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Tags in Discovery

• 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.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Tags in Secrets

• Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in their actions.

  Charles Caleb Colton

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

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Topics in Power, Religion

• Many speak the truth when they say that they despise riches, but they mean the riches possessed by others.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• We owe almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed, but to those who have differed.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Topics in Knowledge

• 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

• 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

  Topics in Power

• Of all the faculties of the mind, memory is the first that flourishes, the first that dies.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Topics in Memory

• If a horse has four legs, and I’m riding it, I think I can win.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• All adverse and depressing influences can be overcome, not by fighting, but by rising above them.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• Philosophy is a bully that talks loud when the danger is at a distant; but, the moment she is pressed hard by an enemy, she is nowhere to be found and leaves the brunt of the battle to be fought by her steady, humble comrade, religion.

  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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