Explore Quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

An Irish man fights before he reasons, a Scotchman reasons before he fights, an Englishman is not particular as to the order of precedence, but will do either to accommodate his customers.

Those that know the least of others think the highest of themselves.

Precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity as to those mysterious powers assumed by others.

The seeds of repentance are sown in youth by pleasure, but the harvest is reaped in age by pain.

Public charities and benevolent associations for the gratuitous relief of every species of distress, are peculiar to Christianity; no other system of civil or religious policy has originated them; they form its highest praise and characteristic feature.

Pity a thing often avowed, seldom felt; hatred is a thing often felt, seldom avowed.

We are more inclined to hate one another for points on which we differ, than to love one another for points on which we agree.

True goodness is not without that germ of greatness that can bear with patience the mistakes of the ignorant.

In life we shall find many men that are great, and some that are good, but very few men that are both great and good.

Opinions, like showers, are generated in high places, but they invariably descend into lower ones, and ultimately flow down to the people as rain unto the sea.

We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine, but if defer tasting them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.

Pride, like the magnet, constantly points to one object, self; but, unlike the magnet, it has no attractive pole, but at all points repels.

Pride requires very costly food-its keeper's happiness.

To despise our own species is the price we must often pay for knowledge of it.

There is this paradox in pride - it makes some men ridiculous, but prevents others from becoming so.

Of all the marvelous works of God, perhaps the one angels view with the most supreme astonishment, is a proud man.

Ambition is to the mind what the cap is to the falcon; it blinds us first, and then compels us to tower by reason of our blindness.

Early rising not only gives us more life in the same number of years, but adds, likewise, to their number; and not only enables us to enjoy more of existence in the same time, but increases also the measure.

Subtract from the great man all that he owes to opportunity, all that he owes to chance, and all that he gained by the wisdom of his friends and the folly of his enemies, and the giant will often be seen to be a pygmy.

We cannot think too highly of our nature, nor too humbly of ourselves.

We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves; it is civil war.