Quotes By Charles Caleb Colton

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.

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

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 dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.

If a horse has four legs, and I'm riding it, I think I can win.

When you have nothing to say, say nothing.

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

Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route.

Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.

Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance.

There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.

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

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.

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

There are some frauds so well conducted that it would be stupidity not to be deceived by them.

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.

The mistakes of the fool are known to the world, but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself, but not to the world.

Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.

Those who visit foreign nations, but associate only with their own country-men, change their climate, but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with traveled bodies, but untravelled minds.

I'm aiming by the time I'm fifty to stop being an adolescent.

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

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.

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

To write what is worth publishing, to find honest people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it, are the three great difficulties in being an author.

Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.

Mystery is not profoundness.

In religion as in politics it so happens that we have less charity for those who believe half our creed, than for those who deny the whole of it.

Knowledge is two-fold, and consists not only in an affirmation of what is true, but in the negation of that which is false.

Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship - never.

Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.