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Charles Caleb Colton Quotes - Page 6

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If a cause be good, the most violent attack of its enemies will not injure it so much as an injudicious defence of it by its friends.

If a cause be good, the most violent attack of its enemies will not injure it so much as an injudicious defence of it by its friends.

Charles Caleb Colton
Enemy, Causes, Violent
Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.215

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

Charles Caleb Colton
God, Men, Law

Taking things not as they ought to be, but as they are, I fear it must be allowed that Macchiavelli will always have more disciples than Jesus.

Charles Caleb Colton
Jesus, Cunning, Disciple
Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”

There are only two things in which the false professors of all religions have agreed--to persecute all other sects and to plunder their own.

Charles Caleb Colton
Two, Religion, Atheism
Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.96

A public debt is a kind of anchor in the storm; but if the anchor be too heavy for the vessel, she will be sunk by that very weight which was intended for her preservation.

Charles Caleb Colton
Anchors, Storm, Debt
Charles Caleb Colton (1821). “Lacon: or, Many things in few words”, p.92

Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.

Charles Caleb Colton
Evil, Decision, Choices
Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.210

All the poets are indebted more or less to those who have gone before them; even Homer's originality has been questioned, and Virgil owes almost as much to Theocritus, in his Pastorals, as to Homer, in his Heroics; and if our own countryman, Milton, has soared above both Homer and Virgil, it is because he has stolen some feathers from their wings.

Charles Caleb Colton
Wings, Gone, Originality

Make no enemies; he is insignificant indeed that can do thee no harm.

Charles Caleb Colton
Enemy, Harm, Thee

The rich are more envied by those who have a little, than by those who have nothing.

Charles Caleb Colton
Littles, Wealth, Rich
Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.106

He that studies only men will get the body of knowledge without the soul; and he that studies only books, the soul without the body.

Charles Caleb Colton
Book, Men, Soul
Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.416

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

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

The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.

Charles Caleb Colton
Math, Magnificence, Study
Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.164

That is fine benevolence, finely executed, which, like the Nile, comes from hidden sources.

Charles Caleb Colton
Source, Fine, Benevolence

Honor is the most capricious in her rewards. She feeds us with air, and often pulls down our house, to build our monument.

Charles Caleb Colton
Air, House, Honor

How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy! In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age we are looking backward to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day when we have time.

Charles Caleb Colton
Determination, Past, Age
Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.101

Cheerfulness ought to be the viaticum vitae of their life to the old; age without cheerfulness is a Lapland winter without a sun.

Charles Caleb Colton
Winter, Age, Lapland
Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”

There is a holy love and a holy rage, and our best virtues never glow so brightly as when our passions are excited in the cause. Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues; and the best of us are better when roused.

Charles Caleb Colton
Passion, Sloth, Causes
Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.173

Few things are more agreeable to self-love than revenge, and yet no cause so effectually restrains us from revenge as self-love. And this paradox naturally suggests another; that the strength of the community is not unfrequently built upon the weakness of those individuals that compose it.

Charles Caleb Colton
Revenge, Self, Community
Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”

The plainest man that can convince a woman that he is really in love with her has done more to make her in love with him than the handsomest man, if he can produce no such conviction. For the love of woman is a shoot, not a seed, and flourishes most vigorously only when ingrafted on that love which is rooted in the breast of another.

Charles Caleb Colton
Love, Men, Done
Charles Caleb Colton (1825). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words : Addressed to Those who Think”, p.10

The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read.

Charles Caleb Colton
Wise, Art, Moments
Philip Dormer Stanhope (4th earl of Chesterfield.), Charles Caleb Colton (1861). “Lord Chesterfield's advice to his son on men and manners. To which are added, selections from Colton's 'Lacon'.”, p.194

Words indeed are but the signs and counters of knowledge, and their currency should be strictly regulated by the capital which they represent.

Charles Caleb Colton
Currency, Should
Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.12

Mystery magnifies danger as the fog the sun.

Charles Caleb Colton
Fog, Sun, Mystery
Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.182

It is curious that some learned dunces, because they can write nonsense in languages that are dead, should despise those that talk sense in languages that are living.

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

There were moments of despondency when Shakespeare thought himself no poet, and Raphael no painter; when the greatest wits have doubted the excellence of their happiest efforts.

Charles Caleb Colton
Effort, Excellence, Melancholy

It is with nations as with individuals, those who know the least of others think the highest of themselves; for the whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other.

Charles Caleb Colton
Ignorance, Pride, Thinking
Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.190

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