Quotes from Charles Caleb Colton

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.

Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live

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

When you have nothing to say, say nothing; a weak defense strengthens your opponent, and silence is less injurious than a bad reply.

Logic is a large drawer, containing some useful instruments, and many more that are superfluous. A wise man will look into it for two purposes, to avail himself of those instruments that are really useful, and to admire the ingenuity with which those that are not so, are assorted and arranged.

There are three modes of bearing the ills of life: by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion.

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.

True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.

Theories are private property, but truth is common stock.

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

A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition.

Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.

When you have nothing to say, say nothing.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.

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.

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