Charles Caleb Colton Quotes - Page 23

• Jealousy is sustained as often by pride as by affection.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Jealousy, Pride, Affection

  8 Copy quote

• There are many women who have never intrigued, and many men who have never gamed; but those who have done either but once are very extraordinary animals.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Animal, Men, Done

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.355

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• The further we advance in knowledge, the more simplicity shall we discover in those primary rules that regulate all the apparently endless, complicated, and multiform operations of the Godhead.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Knowledge, Simplicity, Complicated

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.102

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• We cannot think too highly of our nature, nor too humbly of ourselves. When we see the martyr to virtue, subject as he is to the infirmities of a man, yet suffering the tortures of a demon, and bearing them with the magnanimity of a God, do we not behold a heroism that angels may indeed surpass, but which they cannot imitate, and must admire.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Humility, Angel, Men

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.212

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• Those who worship gold in a world so corrupt as this we live in have at least one thing to plead in defense of their idolatry--the power of their idol. It is true that, like other idols, it can neither move, see, hear, feel, nor understand; but, unlike other idols, it has often communicated all these powers to those who had them not, and annihilated them in those who had. This idol can boast of two peculiarities; it is worshipped in all climates, without a single temple, and by all classes, without a single hypocrite.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Moving, Hypocrite, Idols

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• There are two things which ought to teach us to think but meanly of human glory; the very best have had their calumniators, the very worst their panegyrists.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Thinking, Two, Glory

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.218

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• Too high an appreciation of our own talents is the chief cause why experience preaches to us all in vain.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Appreciation, Experience, Causes

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

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• The hand that unnerved Belshazzar derived its most horrifying influence from the want of a body, and death itself is not formidable in what we do know of it, but in what we do not.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Death, Hands, Body

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.169

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• Many a man may thank his talent for his rank, but no man has ever been able to return the compliment by thanking his rank for his talent.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Men, May, Able

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.17

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• Some indeed there are who profess to despise all flattery, but even these are nevertheless to be flattered, by being told that they do despise it.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Flattery, Despise, Nevertheless

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.206

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• How strange it is that we of the present day are constantly praising that past age which our fathers abused, and as constantly abusing that present age, which our children will praise.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Children, Father, Past

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

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• When we are in the company of sensible men, we ought to be doubly cautious of talking too much, lest we lose two good things, their good opinion and our own improvement; for what we have to say we know, but what they have to say we know not.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Men, Two, Talking

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

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• They that are loudest in their threats are the weakest in the execution of them. It is probable that he who is killed by lightning hears no noise; but the thunder-clap which follows, and which most alarms the ignorant, is the surest proof of their safety.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Safety, Ignorant, Execution

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• To be continually subject to the breath of slander, will tarnish the purest virtue, as a constant exposure to the atmosphere will obscure the brightness of the finest gold; but in either case, the real value of both continues the same, although the currency may be somewhat impeded.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Real, Atmosphere, Gold

  Charles Caleb COLTON (1849). “L.P.”, p.181

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• She is deceitful as the calm that precedes the hurricane, smooth as the water on the verge of the cataract, and beautiful as the rainbow, that smiling daughter of the storm; but, like the mirage in the desert, she tantalizes us with a delusion that distance creates, and that contiguity destroys.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Daughter, Rainbow, Storm

  "Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan".

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• False reasoners are often best confuted by giving them the full swing of their own absurdities.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Swings, Giving, Reason

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.57

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• Envy ought to have no place allowed it in the hearts of people; for the goods of this present world are so vile and low that they are beneath it; and those of the future world are so vast and exalted that they are above it.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Heart, People, Envy

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• It is astonishing how much more anxious people are to lengthen life than to improve it; and as misers often lose large sums of money in attempting to make more, so do hypochondriacs squander large sums of time in search of nostrums by which they vainly hope they may get more time to squander.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  People, May, Medical

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

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• Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Heart, Punishment, Vices

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.189

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• In civil jurisprudence it too often happens that there is so much law, that there is no room for justice, and that the claimant expires of wrong in the midst of right, as mariners die of thirst in the midst of water.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Law, Justice, Water

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.303

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• Theory is worth but little, unless it can explain its own phenomena, and it must effect this without contradicting itself; therefore, the facts are sometimes assimilated to the theory, rather than the theory to the facts.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Littles, Facts, Sometimes

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.69

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• Light, whether it be material or moral, is the best reformer; for it prevents those disorders which other remedies sometimes cure, but sometimes confirm.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Light, Moral, Sometimes

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.421

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• Princes rule the people, and their own passions rule Princes; but Providence can over-rule the whole, and draw the instruments of his inscrutable purposes from the vices, no less than the virtues of Kings.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Kings, Passion, People

  Philip Dormer Stanhope (4th earl of Chesterfield.), Charles Caleb Colton (1861). “Lord Chesterfield's advice to his son on men and manners. To which are added, selections from Colton's 'Lacon'.”, p.206

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• The avarice of the miser may be termed the grand sepulchral of all his other passions, as they successively decay.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Passion, Greed, Decay

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• Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Believe, Self, Denial

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.101

  4 Copy quote

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