Charles Caleb Colton

Contemporaries appreciate the person rather than their merit, posterity will regard the merit rather than the person.

He that knows himself, knows others; and he that is ignorant of himself, could not write a very profound lecture on other men's heads.

To know a man, observe how he wins his object, rather than how he loses it; for when we fail, our pride supports us - when we succeed, it betrays us.

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.

Pure truth, like pure gold, has been found unfit for circulation because men have discovered that it is far more convenient to adulterate the truth than to refine themselves.

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

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.

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

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

Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase.

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.

Time, the cradle of hope.... Wisdom walks before it, opportunity with it, and repentance behind it: he that has made it his friend will have little to fear from his enemies, but he that has made it his enemy will have little to hope from his friends.

Money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed. Health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied.