Explore Quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread.

The excess of our youth are checks written against our age and they are payable with interest thirty years later.

Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.

No company is preferable to bad. We are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.

Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance.

If a horse has four legs, and I'm riding it, I think I can win.

Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.

Avarice has ruined more souls than extravagance.

There are three modes of bearing the ills of life; by indifference, which is the most common; by philosophy, which is the most ostentatious; and by religion, which is the most effectual.

The firmest of friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame.

If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; if you would know, and not be known, live in a city.

Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and hell a fable.

Law and equity are two things which God has joined, but which man has put asunder.

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.

It is better to meet danger than to wait for it. He that is on a lee shore, and foresees a hurricane, stands out to sea and encounters a storm to avoid a shipwreck.

We own almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed.

Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.

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.

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.

Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.

He that studies books alone, will know how things ought to be; and he that studies men, will know how things are.