Charles Caleb Colton Quotes - Page 12

• No metaphysician ever felt the deficiency of language so much as the grateful.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Thank You, Gratitude, Grateful

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.235

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• Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow; but the misfortune is that in this particular case, the substance belongs to the shadow, the emptiness to its cause.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Pain, Shadow, Substance

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.83

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• The acquirements of science maybe termed the armor of the mind.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Education, Mind, Armor

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• If once a woman breaks through the barriers of decency, her ease is desperate; and if she goes greater lengths than the men, and leaves the pale of propriety farther behind her, it is because she is aware that all return is prohibited, and by none so strongly as by her own sex.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Sex, Men, Break Through

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• Discretion has been termed the better part of valour, and it is more certain, that diffidence is the better part of knowledge.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Certain, Diffidence, Has Beens

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.4

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• We should not be too niggardly in our praise, for men will do more to support a character than to raise one.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Character, Men, Support

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.167

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• It is with honesty in one particular as with wealth,--those that have the thing care less about the credit of it than those who have it not. No poor man can well afford to be thought so, and the less of honesty a finished rogue possesses the less he can afford to be supposed to want it.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Honesty, Men, Credit

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.377

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• Our actions must clothe us with an immortality loathsome or glorious.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Our Actions, Action, Immortality

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.37

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• Diffidence is the better part of knowledge.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Diffidence, Uncertainty

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.4

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• We may anticipate bliss, but who ever drank of that enchanted cup unalloved?

  Charles Caleb Colton

  May, Cups, Bliss

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• Butler compared the tongues of these eternal talkers to race-horses, which go the faster the less weight they carry.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Horse, Race, Talking

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.194

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• Pride differs in many things from vanity, and by gradations that never blend, although they may be somewhat indistinguishable. Pride may perhaps be termed a too high opinion of ourselves founded on the overrating of certain qualities that we do actually possess; whereas vanity is more easily satisfied, and can extract a feeling of self-complacency from qualifications that are imaginary.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Pride, Vanity, Self

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”

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• 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

  Mean, Secret, Purpose

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.32

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• 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

  Ocean, Sea, Waiting

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.138

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• He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Mean, Atheism, Knaves

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.181

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• Doubt is the vestibule of faith.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Doubt

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• Others, again, give us the mere carcass of another man’s thoughts, but deprived of all their life and spirit, and this is to add murder to robbery. I have somewhere seen it observed, that we should make the same use of a book, as a bee does of a flower; she steals sweets from it, but does not injure it; and those sweets she herself improves and concocts into honey. But most plagiarists, like the drone, have neither taste to select, nor industry to acquire, nor skill to improve, but impudently pilfer the honey ready prepared from the hive.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Sweet, Flower, Book

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.232

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

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Real, Writing, Editing

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”

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• Some persons will tell you, with an air of the miraculous, that they recovered although they were given over; whereas they might with more reason have said, they recovered because they were given over.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Air, Physicians, Might

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.347

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• There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise. There is one signal instance on record where this kind of prejudice was overcome by a miracle; but the age of miracles is past, while that of prejudice remains.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Past, Men, Miracle

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”, p.63

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• It was served of the Jesuits, that they constantly inculcated a thorough contempt of worldly things in their doctrines, but eagerly grasped at them in their lives. They were wise in their generation; for they cried down worldly things because they wanted to obtain them, and cried up spiritual things, because they wanted to dispose of them.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Wise, Spiritual, Doctrine

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• The head of dullness, unlike the tail of the torpedo, loses nothing of the benumbing and lethargizing influence by reiterated discharges.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Tails, Influence, Torpedoes

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• There are male as well as female gossips.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Gossip, Males, Female

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• A coxcomb begins by determining that his own profession is the first; and he finishes by deciding that he is the first of profession.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Firsts, Profession

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.155

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• As a man of pleasure, by a vain attempt to be more happy than any man can be, is often more miserable than most men are, so the sceptic, in a vain attempt to be wise beyond what is permitted to man, plunges into a darkness more deplorable, and a blindness more incurable than that of the common herd, whom he despises, and would fain instruct.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Wise, Men, Darkness

  Charles Caleb Colton (1837). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words : Addressed to Those who Think”, p.97

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