Charles Caleb Colton Quotations | Page 8

He that thinks he is the happiest man, really is so. But he that thinks he is the wisest, is generally the greatest fool.

Levity is often less foolish and gravity less wise than each of them appears.

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.

There are three kinds of praise, that which we yield, that which we lend, and that which we pay. We yield it to the powerful from fear, we lend it to the weak from interest, and we pay it to the deserving from gratitude.

We should not be too niggardly in our praise, for men will do more to support a character than to raise one.

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.

Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow.

Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow; but the misfortune is that in this particular case, the substance belongs to the shadow, the emptiness to its cause.

Pride is less ashamed of being ignorant, than of being instructed, and she looks too high to find that, which very often lies beneath her.

An act by which we make one friend and one enemy is a losing game; because revenge is a much stronger principle than gratitude

Most importantly: Don't adjust your results to build up the ego of the chief strategist. Especially if the strategist is you.

Be real and adjust you strategy according to honest results.

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, and in both instances, all that we can learn from baad ones is, that some much time has been worse than thrown away.

We should have a glorious conflagration, if all who cannot put fire into their works would only consent to put their works into the fire.

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.

The policy that can strike only while the iron is hot will be overcome by that perseverance, which ... can make that iron hot by striking and he that can only rule the storm must yield to him who can both raise and rule it.

Heaven may have happiness as utterly unknown to us as the gift of perfect vision would be to a man born blind. If we consider the inlets of pleasure from five senses only, we may be sure that the same Being who created us could have given us five hundred, if He had pleased.

He that has never suffered extreme adversity knows not the full extent of his own depravation.

My lowest days as a Christian have been more fulfilling and rewarding than all the days of glory in the White House.

No disorders have employed so many quacks, as those that have no cure; and no sciences have exercised so many quills, as those that have no certainty.

Mystery is not profoundness.

Avarice has ruined more souls than extravagance.

There are two principles of established acceptance in morals; first, that self-interest is the mainspring of all of our actions, and secondly, that utility is the test of their value.

Public charities and benevolent associations for the gratuitous relief of every species of distress, are peculiar to Christianity; no other system of civil or religious policy has originated them; they form its highest praise and characteristic feature.

Pity a thing often avowed, seldom felt; hatred is a thing often felt, seldom avowed.

True goodness is not without that germ of greatness that can bear with patience the mistakes of the ignorant.

Opinions, like showers, are generated in high places, but they invariably descend into lower ones, and ultimately flow down to the people as rain unto the sea.

We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine, but if defer tasting them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.

Pride, like the magnet, constantly points to one object, self; but, unlike the magnet, it has no attractive pole, but at all points repels.

The seeds of repentance are sown in youth by pleasure, but the harvest is reaped in age by pain.

Precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity as to those mysterious powers assumed by others.

Those that know the least of others think the highest of themselves.

We are not more ingenious in searching out bad motives for good actions when performed by others, than good motives for bad actions when performed by ourselves.

Pedantry crams our heads with learned lumber and takes out our brains to make room for it.

If the prodigal quits life in debt to others, the miser quits it still deeper in debt to himself.

Custom looks to things that are past, and fashion to things that are present, but both of them are somewhat purblind as to things that are to come.

When certain persons abuse us, let us ask ourselves what description of characters it is that they admire; we shall often find this a very consolatory question.

When we feel a strong desire to thrust our advice upon others, it is usually because we suspect their weakness; but we ought rather to suspect our own.

An Irish man fights before he reasons, a Scotchman reasons before he fights, an Englishman is not particular as to the order of precedence, but will do either to accommodate his customers.

Pride requires very costly food-its keeper's happiness.

To despise our own species is the price we must often pay for knowledge of it.

A Christian builds his fortitude on a better foundation than stoicism; he is pleased with every thing that happens, because he knows it could not happen unless it first pleased God, and that which pleases Him must be best.

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.

To look back to antiquity is one thing, to go back to it is another.

Time,- that black and narrow isthmus between two eternities.

Time ... advances like the slowest tide, but retreats like the swiftest torrent.

Time is the measurer of all things, but is itself immeasurable, and the grand discloser of all things, but is itself undisclosed.

No man is wise enough, or good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.

He that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

There is this paradox in pride -- it makes some men ridiculous, but prevents others from becoming so.