Explore Quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

There can be no Christianity where there is no charity

Never join with your friend when he abuses his horse or his wife, unless the one is about to be sold, the other to be buried.

For one man who sincerely pities our misfortunes, there are a thousand who sincerely hate our success.

Success seems to be that which forms the distinction between confidence and conceit.

Constant success shows us but one side of the world. For as it surrounds us with friends who will tell us only our merits, so it silences those enemies from whom alone we can learn our defects.

He that is good will infallibly become better, and he that is bad will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue, and time are three things that never stand still.

Those who bequeath unto themselves a pompous funeral, are at just so much expense to inform the world of something that had much better be concealed; namely, that their vanity has survived themselves.

Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it; anything but live for it.

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

Eloquence is the language of nature, and cannot be learned in the schools; but rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least will most excel in.

The worst thing that can be said of the most powerful is that they can take your life; but the same can be said of the most weak.

That cowardice is incorrigible which the love of power cannot overcome.

Physicians must discover the weaknesses of the human mind, and even condescend to humor them, or they will never be called in to cure the infirmities of the body.

Attempts at reform, when they fail, strengthen despotism, as he that struggles tightens those cords he does not succeed in breaking.

If we trace the history of most revolutions, we shall find that the first inroads upon the laws have been made by the governors, as often as by the governed.

Wars of opinion, as they have been the most destructive, are also the most disgraceful of conflicts.

To cure us of our immoderate love of gain, we should seriously consider how many goods there are that money will not purchase, and these the best; and how many evils there are that money will not remedy, and these the worst.

Of all the faculties of the mind, memory is the first that flourishes, and the first that dies.

In great cities men are more callous both to the happiness and the misery of others, than in the country; for they are constantly in the habit of seeing both extremes.

Deliberate with caution, but act with decision and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.

We ought not to be over-anxious to encourage innovation in cases of doubtful improvement, for an old system must ever have two advantages over a new one; it is established, and it is understood.