Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

• 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

• Justice to my readers compels me to admit that I write because I have nothing to do; justice to myself induces me to add that I will cease to write the moment I have nothing to say.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• If rich, it is easy enough to conceal our wealth but, if poor, it is not quite so easy to conceal our poverty. We shall find it is less difficult to hide a thousand guineas, than one hole in our coat.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• He that knows himself, knows others; and he that is ignorant of himself, could not write a very profound lecture on other men’s heads.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Topics in Knowledge

• Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Writing

• 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

  Topics in Knowledge

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

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Tags in Selfishness

• Be very slow to believe that you are wiser than all others; it is a fatal but common error.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• Through the proportion of those who think be extremely small, yet every individual flatters himself that he is one of the number.

  Charles Caleb Colton

• Fame is an undertaker that pays but little attention to the living, but bedizens the dead, furnishes out their funerals, and follows them to the grave.

  Charles Caleb Colton

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  Tags in Fame

• The rich are more envied by those who have a little, than by those who have nothing.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Fortune, Materialism

• It is doubtful whether mankind are most indebted to those who like Bacon and Butler dig the gold from the mine of literature, or to those who, like Paley, purify it, stamp it, fix its real value, and give it currency and utility.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Mankind, Literature

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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