Quotes By Charles Caleb Colton

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Patience is the support of weakness; impatience the ruin of strength.

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

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.

There is this difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man, really is so; but he that thinks himself the wisest, is generally the greatest fool.

We often pretend to fear what we really despise, and more often despise what we really fear.

Our incomes should be like our shoes; if too small, they will gall and pinch us; but if too large, they will cause us to stumble and to trip.

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