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CHARLES CALEB COLTON QUOTES VI

There are many who say more than the truth on some occasions, and balance the account with their consciences by saying less than the truth on others. But the fact is that they are in both instances as fraudulant as he would be that exacted more than his due from his debtors, and paid less than their due to his creditors.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate, the nearer we arrive unto it.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

Is the Deity able to prevent evil, but not willing, where is his benevolence; is he willing, but not able, where is his power; is he both able and willing, whence then is evil?

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

Love is an alchemist that can transmute poison into food.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

Of present fame think little, and of future less. The praises that we receive after we are buried, like the posies that are strewn over our graves, may be gratifying to the living, but they are nothing to the dead; the dead are gone, either to a place where they hear them not, or where, if they do, they will despise them.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

Death is the only sovereign whom no partiality can warp, and no price corrupt.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

Alas! What is man? Whether he be deprived of that light which is from on high, of whether he discard it, a frail and trembling creature; standing on time, that bleak and narrow isthmus between two eternities, he sees nothing but impenetrable darkness on the one hand, and doubt, distrust, and conjecture, still more perplexing, on the other. Most gladly would he take an observation, as to whence he has come, or whither he is going; alas, he has not the means: his telescope is too dim, his compass too wavering, his plummet too short.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

Happiness is that single and glorious thing which is the very light and sun of the whole animated universe; and where she is not, it were better that nothing should be. Without her, wisdom is but a shadow, and virtue a name; she is their sovereign mistress; for her alone they labour, and by her they will be paid; to enjoy her, and to communicate her, is the object of their efforts, and the consummation of their toil.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

Pride either finds a desert, or makes one; submission cannot tame its ferocity, nor satiety fill its voracity, and it requires very costly food--its keeper's happiness.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

Society is a sphere that demands all our energies, and deserves all that it demands.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

Evils in the journey of life are like the hills which alarm travellers upon their road; they both appear great at a distance, but when we approach them we find that they are far less insurmountable than we had conceived.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

It is far more easy to pull down, than to build up, and to destroy, than to preserve. Revolutions have on this account been falsely supposed to be fertile of great talent; as the dregs rise to the top, during a fermentation, and the lightest things are carried highest by the whirlwind. And the practice of this proposition bears out the theory; for demagogues have succeeded tolerably well in making ruins; but the moment they begin to build anew from the materials that they have overthrown, they have often been uselessly employed with regard to others, and more often dangerously with regard to themselves.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

Truth can hardly be expected to adapt herself to the crooked policy and wily sinuosities of worldly affairs; for truth, like light, travels only in straight lines.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

All wars of interference, arising from an officious intrusion into the concerns of other states; all wars of ambition, carried on for the purposes of aggrandizement; and all wars of aggression, undertaken for the purpose of forcing an assent to this or that set of religious opinions; all such wars are criminal in their very outset, and have hypocrisy for their common base.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

If you want enemies, excel others; if you want friends, let others excel you.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice, should go a little farther and try to plant a virtue in its place, otherwise he will have his labour to renew; a strong soil that has produced weeds, may be made to produce wheat, with far less difficulty than it would cost to make it produce nothing.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

Flattery is often a traffic of mutual meanness, where, although both parties intend deception, neither are deceived; since words that cost little are exchanged for hopes that cost less. But we must be careful how we flatter fools too little, or wise men too much; for the flatterer must act the very reverse of the physician, and administer the strongest dose only to the weakest patient.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

Words are in this respect like water, that they often take their taste, flavour, and character, from the mouth out of which they proceed, as the water from the channel through which it flows.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

If a man could make gold, he would incur a double danger, first, from his own avarice, and secondly from the avarice of other men. The first would make him a slave, or the second a prisoner; for princes and potentates would think a goldmaker a very convenient member of their exchequer.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

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, Lacon

There is this of good in real evils, they deliver us while they last from the petty despotism of all that were imaginary.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

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.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

Men spend their lives in anticipations, in determining to be vastly happy at some period or other, when they have time; but the present time has an advantage over every other--it is our own.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

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, Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words

Were we as eloquent as angels, we should please ... much more by listening than by talking.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

Literature has now become a game, in which the booksellers are the kings; the critics the knaves; the public the pack; and the poor author the mere table, or thing played upon.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

So long as lust, whether of the world or flesh, smells sweet in our nostrils, so long we are loathsome to God.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, attributed, The Seven Deadly Sins: A Companion

Antithesis may be the blossom of wit, but it will never arrive at maturity unless sound sense be the trunk and truth the root.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon; Or, Many Things in a Few Words

The martyrs to vice, far exceed the martyrs to virtue, both in endurance and in number. So blinded are we by our passions, that we suffer more to be damned than to be saved.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon; or, Many Things in Few Words

Time -- that black and narrow isthmus between two eternities.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers

Truth lies in a small compass, and if a well has been assigned her, for a habitation, it is as appropriate from its narrowness, as its depth.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

Where one has been saved by a true estimation of another's weakness, thousands have been destroyed by a false appreciation of their own strength.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan

Rats and conquerors must expect no mercy in misfortune.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon: Or, Many Things in a Few Words

The next thing to having merit ourselves, is to take care that the meritorious profit by us; for he that rewards the deserving, makes himself one of the number.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon; or Many Things in Few Words Addressed to Those Who Think

We are not more ingenious in searching out bad motives for good actions when performed by others, than good motives for bad actions when performed by ourselves.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon; or Many Things in Few Words Addressed to Those Who Think

Of all the passions, jealousy is that which exacts the hardest service and pays the bitterest wages. Its service is to watch the success of our enemies; its wages to be sure of it.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with our all to keep it.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

Intimacy has been the source of the deadliest enmity, no less than of the firmest friendship; like some mighty rivers which rise on the same mountain but pursue a quite contrary course.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon

Light, whether it be material or moral, is the best reformer; for it prevents those disorders which other remedies sometimes cure, but sometimes confirm.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words


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