Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

• 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

  Topics in Best Friend

• 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

  Topics in Genius

• We ask advice, but we mean approbation.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Topics in Advice

• 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

  Tags in Contentment

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

  Charles Caleb Colton

• 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

• 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

  Topics in Love

• 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

• 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

• If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• When the frustration of my helplessness seemed greatest, I discovered God’s grace was more than sufficient. And after my imprisonment, I could look back and see how God used my powerlessness for His purpose. What He has chosen for my most significant witness was not my triumphs or victories, but my defeat.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• There are some frauds so well conducted that it would be stupidity not to be deceived by 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

  Topics in Life

• Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Tags in Examination

• Nothing so completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straightforward and simple integrity in another.

  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

• The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Tags in Prejudice

• True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Topics in Friendship

• The family is the most basic unit of government. As the first community to which a person is attached and the first authority under which a person learns to live, the family establishes society’s most basic values.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Tags in Mathematics

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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