Charles Caleb Colton

Our income are like our shoes; if too small, they gall and pinch us; but if too large, they cause us to stumble and trip.

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

There are some frauds so well conducted that it would be stupidity not to be deceived by them.

Theory is worth but little, unless it can explain its own phenomena, and it must effect this without contradicting itself; therefore, the facts are sometimes assimilated to the theory, rather than the theory to the facts.

Never join with your friend when he abuses his horse or his wife, unless the one is about to be sold, and the other to be buried.

The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility.

I'm aiming by the time I'm fifty to stop being an adolescent.

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

Avarice has ruined more souls than extravagance.

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

Theories are private property, but truth is common stock

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

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

Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship - never.

Nobility is a river that sets with a constant and undeviating current, directly into the great Pacific Ocean of Time; but, unlike all other rivers, it is more grand at its source, than at its termination.

Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past even while we attempt to define it, and, like the flash of lightning, at once exists and expires.

The smiling daughter of the storm.

As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.

The greatest friend of truth is time, her greatest enemy is prejudice, and her constant companion is humility.

There are two way of establishing a reputation, one to be praised by honest people and the other to be accused by rogues. It is best, however, to secure the first one, because it will always be accompanied by the latter.

Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance.

It is a common observation that any fool can get money; but they are not wise that think so.

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.

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

If sensuality be our only happiness we ought to envy the brutes, for instinct is a surer, shorter, safer guide to such happiness than reason.

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.

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

Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it's set a rolling it must increase.

Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.

The firmest of friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame.

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

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.

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

We hate some persons because we do not know them and will not know them because we hate them.

Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.

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.

Idleness is the grand Pacific Ocean of life, and in that stagnant abyss the most salutary things produce no good, the most noxious no evil. Vice, indeed, abstractedly considered, may be, and often is engendered in idleness; but the moment it becomes efficiently vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle.

Oppression cannot prosper where none will submit to be enslaved.

The excess of our youth are checks written against our age and they are payable with interest thirty years later.

Great minds must be ready not only to take opportunities but to make them.

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.

To know a man, observe how he wins his object, rather than how he loses it; for when we fail, our pride supports us - when we succeed, it betrays us.

Life isn't like a book. Life isn't logical or sensible or orderly. Life is a mess most of the time. And theology must be lived in the midst of that mess.

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.

Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent; for wealth, although it be a far less efficient source of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible.

Ambition is to the mind what the cap is to the falcon; it blinds us first, and then compels us to tower by reason of our blindness.

Secrecy is the soul of all great designs. Perhaps more has been effected by concealing our own intentions than by discovering those of our enemy.

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.

A hug is worth a thousand words. A friend is worth more.True friendship is like sound health the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.

Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.

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.

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.

Insults are engendered from vulgar minds, like toadstools from a dunghill.

No company is preferable to bad. We are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.

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

Corruption is like a ball of snow once its set a rolling it must increase.

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.

The present time has one advantage over every other - it is our own.

Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish.

We make a goddess of Fortune ... and place her in the highest heaven. But it is not fortune that is exalted and powerful but we ourselves that are abject and weak.

Grant graciously what you cannot refuse safely and conciliate those you cannot conquer.

For one man who sincerely pities our misfortunes there are a thousand who sincerely hate our success.

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.

Injuries accompanied with insults are never forgiven: all men, on these occasions, are good haters, and lay out their revenge at compound interest.

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

Gold is worshipped in all climates without a single temple and by all classes without a single hypocrite.

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

Knowledge is two-fold, and consists not only in an affirmation of what is true, but in the negation of that which is false.

The greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.

If Satan ever laughs it must be at hypocrites they are the greatest dupes he has they serve him better than any others and receive no wages.

If a horse has four legs, and I'm riding it, I think I can win.

Men's arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.

There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.

Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live.

When the cruel fall into the hands of the cruel, we read their fate with horror, not with pity.

Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in their actions.

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.

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

Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.

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.

A diamond incarcerated in its subterraneous prison rough and unpolished differs not from a common stone.

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.

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

Never join with your friend when he abuses his horse or his wife unless the one is about to be sold the other to be buried.

Friendship often ends in love but love in friendship never.

When you have nothing to say, say nothing.

Men are born with two eyes but with one tongue in order that they should see twice as much as they say.

There are two modes of establishing our reputation; to be praised by honest men, and to be abused by rogues.

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

The victim to too severe a law is considered as a martyr rather than a criminal.

True friendship is like sound health the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.

Envy if surrounded on all sides by the brightness of anothers prosperity like the scorpion confined within a circle of fire will sting itself to death.

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.

We own almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed.

Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride.

If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself; all that runs over will be yours.

Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.

He that knows himself, knows others; and he that is ignorant of himself, could not write a very profound lecture on other men's heads.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

The French revolution was a machine invented and constructed for the purpose of manufacturing liberty but it had neither lever cogs nor adjusting powers and the consequences were that it worked so rapidly that it destroyed its own inventors and set itself on fire.