Quotes from Charles Caleb Colton

Self-denial is often the sacrifice of one sort of self-love for another.

We are more inclined to hate one another for points on which we differ, than to love one another for points on which we agree.

There are two way of establishing a reputation, one to be praised by honest people and the other to be accused by rogues. It is best, however, to secure the first one, because it will always be accompanied by the latter.

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.

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

Falsehood is often rocked by truth, but she soon outgrows her cradle and discards her nurse.

Truth can hardly be expected to adapt herself to the crooked policy and wily sinuosities of worldly affairs; for truth, like light, travels only in straight lines.

He that gives a portion of his time and talent to the investigation of mathematical truth, will come to all other questions with a decided advantage over his opponents.

Antithesis may be the blossom of wit, but it will never arrive at maturity unless sound sense be the trunk and truth the root.

It is not so difficult a task as to plant new truths, as to root out old errors

In science, reason is the guide; in poetry, taste. The object of the one is truth, which is uniform and indivisible; the object of the other is beauty, which is multiform and varied.

The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth; all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing.

Error, when she retraces her steps, has farther to go before she can arrive at truth than ignorance.

The temple of truth is built indeed of stones of crystal, but, inasmuch as men have been concerned in rearing it, it has been consolidated by a cement composed of baser materials.

There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise.

Pure truth like pure gold has been found unfit for circulation because men have discovered that it is far more convenient to adulterate the truth than to refine themselves.

Love is an alchemist that can transmute poison into food.

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

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

Nothing so completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straightforward and simple integrity in another.

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.

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

Women generally consider consequences in love, seldom in resentment.

Love, like the cold bath, is never negative, it seldom leaves us where it finds us; if once we plunge into it, it will either heighten our virtues, or inflame our vices.