Explore Quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.

Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish.

Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in their actions.

If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself; all that runs over will be yours.

Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straight forward and simple integrity in another.

Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us - never cease to instruct - never cloy.

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

Mystery magnifies danger, as a fog the sun, the hand that warned Belshazzar derived its horrifying effect from the want of a body.

As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.

Were we as eloquent as angels we still would please people much more by listening rather than talking.

Expect not praise without envy until you are dead.

Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice makes concerning wealth. She begins by accumulating power as a means to happiness, and she finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end.

Love is an alliance of friendship and animalism; if the former predominates it is passion exalted and refined; if the latter, gross and sensual.

Our minds are as different as our faces. We are all traveling to one destination: happiness, but few are going by the same road.

In all societies, it is advisable to associate if possible with the highest; not that the highest are always the best, but because, if disgusted there, we can descend at any time; but if we begin with the lowest, to ascend is impossible.

In cases of doubtful morality, it is usual to say is there any harm in doing this? This question may sometimes be best answered by asking ourselves another; is there any harm in letting it alone?

The only things in which we can be said to have any property are our actions. Our thoughts may be bad, yet produce no poison; they may be good, yet produce no fruit. Our riches may be taken away by misfortune, our reputation by malice, our spirits by calamity, our health by disease, our friends by death. But our actions must follow us beyond the grave; with respect to them alone, we cannot say that we shall carry nothing with us when we die, neither that we shall go naked out of the world.

Of all the passions, jealousy is that which exacts the hardest service, and pays the bitterest wages. Its service is to watch the success of one's enemy; its wages to be sure of it.

What is earthly happiness? that phantom of which we hear so much, and see so little; whose promises are constantly given and constantly broken, but as constantly believed; that cheats us with the sound instead of the substance, and with the blossom instead of the fruit. Like Juno, she is a goddess in pursuit, but a cloud in possession.

With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid, than which to choose; for good books are as scarce as good companions...

There are three difficulties in authorship;-to write any thing worth the publishing-to find honest men to publish it -and to get sensible men to read it. Literature has now become a game; in which the Booksellers are the Kings; The Critics the Knaves; the Public, the Pack; and the poor Author, the mere table, or the Thing played upon.