Quotes from Charles Caleb Colton

A house may draw visitors but it is the possessor alone that can detain them.

Honor is unstable and seldom the same; for she feeds upon opinion, and is as fickle as her food.

Hope is a prodigal young heir, and experience is his banker.

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

Expect not praise without envy until you are dead.

Physicians must discover the weaknesses of the human mind, and even condescend to humor them, or they will never be called in to cure the infirmities of the body.

Imitation is the highest form of flattery.

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

We ought not to be over-anxious to encourage innovation in cases of doubtful improvement, for an old system must ever have two advantages over a new one; it is established, and it is understood.

Power, like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer; it dignifies meanness; it magnifies littleness; to what is contemptible, it gives authority; to what is low, exaltation.

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.

Jealousy is sustained as often by pride as by affection.

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

In the pursuit of knowledge, follow it wherever it is to be found; like fern, it is the produce of all climates, and like coin, its circulation is not restricted to any particular class.

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

The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.

Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.

Faith and works are necessary to our spiritual life as Christians, as soul and body are to our natural life as men; for faith is the soul of religion, and works the body.

Heroism, self-denial, and magnanimity, in all instances where they do not spring from a principle of religion, are but splendid altars on which we sacrifice one kind of self-love to another.

You cannot separate charity and religion.

The three great apostles of practical atheism that make converts without persecuting and retain them without preaching are Wealth Health and Power.

Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent; for wealth, although it be a far less efficient source of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible.

Genius, in one respect, is like gold; numbers of persons are constantly writing about both, who have neither.

Words are in this respect like water, that they often take their taste, flavour, and character, from the mouth out of which they proceed, as the water from the channel through which it flows.