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Charles Caleb Colton Quotes - Page 10

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Men of great and shining qualities do not always succeed in life, but the fault lies more often in themselves than in others.

Men of great and shining qualities do not always succeed in life, but the fault lies more often in themselves than in others.

Charles Caleb Colton
Lying, Men, Shining
Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.58

Discretion has been termed the better part of valour, and it is more certain, that diffidence is the better part of knowledge.

Charles Caleb Colton
Certain, Diffidence, Has Beens
Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.4

There are both dull correctness and piquant carelessness; it is needless to say which will command the most readers and have the most influence.

Charles Caleb Colton
Dull, Influence, Authorship

The Grecian’s maxim would indeed be a sweeping clause in Literature; it would reduce many a giant to a pygmy; many a speech to a sentence; and many a folio to a primer.

Charles Caleb Colton
Giants, Literature, Speech
Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.4

We may anticipate bliss, but who ever drank of that enchanted cup unalloved?

Charles Caleb Colton
May, Cups, Bliss

It is with honesty in one particular as with wealth,--those that have the thing care less about the credit of it than those who have it not. No poor man can well afford to be thought so, and the less of honesty a finished rogue possesses the less he can afford to be supposed to want it.

Charles Caleb Colton
Honesty, Men, Credit
Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.377

Honesty is not only the deepest policy, but the highest wisdom; since, however difficult it may be for integrity to get on, it is a thousand times more difficult for knavery to get off; and no error is more fatal than that of those who think that Virtue has no other reward because they have heard that she is her own.

Charles Caleb Colton
Honesty, Integrity, Thinking
Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them; such persons covet secrets as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation.

Charles Caleb Colton
Mean, Secret, Purpose
Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.32

If you are under obligations to many, it is prudent to postpone the recompensing of one, until it be in your power to remunerate all; otherwise you will make more enemies by what you give, than by what you withhold.

Charles Caleb Colton
Giving, Enemy, Prudent
Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.115

It is good to act as if. It is even better to grow to the point where it is no longer an act.

Charles Caleb Colton
Grows, Ifs

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
Change, Integrity, Roots

If it be true that men of strong imaginations are usually dogmatists--and I am inclined to think it is so--it ought to follow that men of weak imaginations are the reverse; in which case we should have some compensation for stupidity. But it unfortunately happens that no dogmatist is more obstinate or less open to conviction than a fool.

Charles Caleb Colton
Strong, Men, Thinking
Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.95

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

Charles Caleb Colton
Gratitude, Appreciation, Attitude
Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”, p.104

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

Charles Caleb Colton
Time, Journey, Men
Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.185

No metaphysician ever felt the deficiency of language so much as the grateful.

Charles Caleb Colton
Thank You, Gratitude, Grateful
Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.235

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.

Charles Caleb Colton
Wise, Men, Thinking
"Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think".

Others, again, give us the mere carcass of another man’s thoughts, but deprived of all their life and spirit, and this is to add murder to robbery. I have somewhere seen it observed, that we should make the same use of a book, as a bee does of a flower; she steals sweets from it, but does not injure it; and those sweets she herself improves and concocts into honey. But most plagiarists, like the drone, have neither taste to select, nor industry to acquire, nor skill to improve, but impudently pilfer the honey ready prepared from the hive.

Charles Caleb Colton
Sweet, Flower, Book
Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.232

Doubt is the vestibule of faith.

Charles Caleb Colton
Doubt

He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool.

Charles Caleb Colton
Mean, Atheism, Knaves
Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.181

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.

Charles Caleb Colton
Ocean, Sea, Waiting
Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.138

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

Charles Caleb Colton
Real, Writing, Editing
Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”

Professors in every branch of the sciences, prefer their own theories to truth: the reason is that their theories are private property, but truth is common stock.

Charles Caleb Colton
Science, Branches, Common
Lacon: or many things in a few words (p. 189)

Some persons will tell you, with an air of the miraculous, that they recovered although they were given over; whereas they might with more reason have said, they recovered because they were given over.

Charles Caleb Colton
Air, Physicians, Might
Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.347

It was served of the Jesuits, that they constantly inculcated a thorough contempt of worldly things in their doctrines, but eagerly grasped at them in their lives. They were wise in their generation; for they cried down worldly things because they wanted to obtain them, and cried up spiritual things, because they wanted to dispose of them.

Charles Caleb Colton
Wise, Spiritual, Doctrine

There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise. There is one signal instance on record where this kind of prejudice was overcome by a miracle; but the age of miracles is past, while that of prejudice remains.

Charles Caleb Colton
Past, Men, Miracle
Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”, p.63

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