Explore Quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

Grant graciously what you cannot refuse safely and conciliate those you cannot conquer.

The science of mathematics performs more than it promises, but the science of metaphysics promises more than it performs.

The poorest man would not part with health for money, but the richest would gladly part with all their money for health.

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 that it is less difficult to hide a thousand guineas, than one hole in our coat.

It is not so difficult a task as to plant new truths, as to root out old errors

Professors in every branch of the sciences, prefer their own theories to truth: the reason is that their theories are private property, but truth is common stock.

The acquirements of science may be termed the armour of the mind; but that armour would be worse than useless, that cost us all we had, and left us nothing to defend.

No disorders have employed so many quacks, as those that have no cure; and no sciences have exercised so many quills, as those that have no certainty.

If you are under obligations to many, it is prudent to postpone the recompensing of one, until it be in your power to remunerate all; otherwise you will make more enemies by what you give, than by what you withhold.

Pedantry prides herself on being wrong by rules; while common sense is contented to be right without them.

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

Let those who would affect singularity with success first determine to be very virtuous, and they will be sure to be very singular.

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.

Reply to wit with gravity, and to gravity with wit.

It is far more easy to acquire a fortune like a knave, than to expend it, like a gentleman.

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.

Injuries accompanied with insults are never forgiven: all men, on these occasions, are good haters, and lay out their revenge at compound interest.

Where we cannot invent, we may at least improve.

We ask advice but we mean approbation.

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.

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.