Explore Quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

The two most precious things this side of the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other.

The society of dead authors has this advantage over that of the living: they never flatter us to our faces, nor slander us behind our backs, nor intrude upon our privacy, nor quit their shelves until we take them down.

Of present fame think little, and of future less; the praises that we receive after we are buried, like the flowers that are strewed over our grave, may be gratifying to the living, but they are nothing to the dead.

Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console.

Those who visit foreign nations, but who associate only with their own countrymen, change their climate, but not their customs 'caelum non animum mutant': they see new meridians, but the same men, and with heads as empty as their pockets.

When millions applaud you seriously ask yourself what harm you have done; and when they disapprove you, what good.

Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.

War kills men, and men deplore the loss; but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies.

Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.

There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.

That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.

Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness when bequeathed by those who, even alive, would part with nothing.

Mystery is not profoundness.

Many speak the truth when they say that they despise riches, but they mean the riches possessed by others.

It is always safe to learn, even from our enemies; seldom safe to venture to instruct, even our friends.

In politics, as in religion, it so happens, that we have less charity for those who believe the half of our creed, than for those that deny the whole of it; since if Servetus had been a Mohammedan, he would not have been burnt by Calvin.

He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place.

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

Constant success shows us but one side of the world; adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.

Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores.

Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.