Charles Caleb Colton quotes

“We ask advice, but we mean approbation.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

“Contemporaries appreciate the person rather than their merit, posterity will regard the merit rather than the person.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“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.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“It is always safe to learn, even from our enemies; seldom safe to venture to instruct, even our friends.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

“Mystery is not profoundness.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness when bequeathed by those who, even alive, would part with nothing.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“There are three modes of bearing the ills of life, by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“War kills men, and men deplore the loss; but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“When millions applaud you seriously ask yourself what harm you have done; and when they disapprove you, what good.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“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.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“Of present fame think little, and of future less; the praises that we receive after we are buried, like the flowers that are strewed over our grave, may be gratifying to the living, but they are nothing to the dead.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“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.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“The two most precious things this side of the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“There are three difficulties in authorship: to write anything worth publishing, to find honest men to publish it, and to find sensible men to read it.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“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.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“Physical courage, which despises all danger, will make a man brave in one way; and moral courage, which despises all opinion, will make a man brave in another.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“He that is good, will infallibly become better, and he that is bad, will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue and time are three things that never stand still.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“Justice to my readers compels me to admit that I write because I have nothing to do; justice to myself induces me to add that I will cease to write the moment I have nothing to say.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

“The consequences of things are not always proportionate to the apparent magnitude of those events that have produced them. Thus the American Revolution, from which little was expected, produced much; but the French Revolution, from which much was expected, produced little.”

— Charles Caleb Colton