Quotes from Charles Caleb Colton

We hate some persons because we do not know them; and will not know them because we hate them.

The whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other

Idleness is the grand Pacific Ocean of life, and in that stagnant abyss the most salutary things produce no good, the most noxious no evil. Vice, indeed, abstractedly considered, may be, and often is engendered in idleness; but the moment it becomes efficiently vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle.

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

Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase.

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

When the air balloon was first discovered, some one flippantly asked Dr. Franklin what was the use of it. The doctor answered this question by asking another: "What is the use of a new-born infant? It may become a man

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them; such persons covet secrets as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation.

There is this difference between the two temporal blessings - health and money; money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed; health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied; and this superiority of the latter is still more obvious when we reflec

Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past even while we attempt to define it, and, like the flash of lightning, at once exists and expires.

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

The greatest genius is never so great as when it is chastised and subdued by the highest reason.

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

War is a game in which princes seldom win, the people never

Our very best friends have a tincture of jealousy even in their friendship; and when they hear us praised by others, will ascribe it to sinister and interested motives if they can.

Revenge is a much more punctual paymaster than gratitude

He that places himself neither higher nor lower than he ought to do exercises the truest humility.

Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride.

The greatest friend of Truth is time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion Humility.

The gambler is a moral suicide.

The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum

If Satan ever laughs, it must be at hypocrites; they are the greatest dupes he has.

Philosophy is a bully that talks loud when the danger is at a distant; but, the moment she is pressed hard by an enemy, she is nowhere to be found and leaves the brunt of the battle to be fought by her steady, humble comrade, religion.

Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together.