“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.”
“The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity,
as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame”
“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.”
“True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.”
“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.”
“True friendhip is like sound health: the value of it is seldom know until it is lost.”
“No one knows where he who invented the plow was born, nor where he died; yet he has done more for humanity than the whole race of heroes who have drenched the earth with blood and whose deeds have been handed down with a precision proportionate only to the mischief they wrought.”
“It is not so difficult a task to plant new truths, as to root out old errors; for there is this paradox in men, they run after that which is new, but are prejudiced in favor of that which is old.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Philosophy is a goddess, whose head indeed is in heaven, but whose feet are upon earth; she attempts more than she accomplishes, and promises more than she performs.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Avarice has ruined more men than prodigality, and the blindest thoughtlessness of expenditure has not destroyed so many fortunes as the calculating but insatiable lust of accumulation.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“When in reading we meet with any maxim that may be of use, we should take it for our own, and make an immediate application of it, as we would of the advice of a friend whom we have purposely consulted.”
“Afflictions sent by providence melt the constancy of the noble minded, but confirm the obduracy of the vile, as the same furnace that liquefies the gold, hardens the clay Charles Caleb Colton.”
“Calumny crosses oceans, scales mountains and traverses deserts, with greater ease than the Scythian Abaris, and like him, rides upon a poisoned arrow.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The upright, if he suffer calumny to move him, fears the tongue of man more than the eye of God.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Life often presents us with a choice of evils, rather than of goods.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Some frauds succeed from the apparent candor, the open confidence, and the full blaze of ingenuousness that is thrown around them. The slightest mystery would excite suspicion and ruin all. Such stratagems may be compared to the stars; they are discoverable by darkness and hidden only by light.”
“As that gallant can best affect a pretended passion for one woman who has no true love for another, so he that has no real esteem for any of the virtues can best assume the appearance of them all.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The true motives of our actions, like the real pipes of an organ, are usually concealed; but the gilded and hollow pretext is pompously placed in the front for show.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Extemporaneous and oral harangues will always have this advantage over those that are read from a in manuscript: every burst of eloquence or spark of genius they may contain, however studied they may have been beforehand, will appear to the audience to be the effect of the sudden inspiration of talent.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Eloquence, to produce her full effect, should start from the head of the orator, as Pallas from the brain of Jove, completely armed and equipped. Diffidence, therefore, which is so able a mentor to the writer, would prove a dangerous counsellor for the orator.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“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.”
Source: Lord Chesterfield's advice to his son on men and manners. To which are added, selections from Colton's 'Lacon'.
“I have found by experience that they who have spent all their lives in cities, improve their talents but impair their virtues; and strengthen their minds but weaken their morals.”
“There is no cruelty so inexorable and unrelenting as that which proceeds from a bigoted and presumptuous supposition of doing service to God. The victim of the fanatical persecutor will find that the stronger the motives he can urge for mercy are, the weaker will be his chance for obtaining it, for the merit of his destruction will be supposed to rise in value in proportion as it is effected at the expense of every feeling both of justice and of humanity.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The more gross the fraud the more glibly will it go down, and the more greedily be swallowed, since folly will always find faith where impostors will find imprudence.”
“If Satan ever laughs, it must be at hypocrites; they are the greatest dupes he has.”
Source: L.P.
“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.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Brutes leave ingratitude to man.”
“Knavery is supple, and can bend, but honesty is firm and upright and yields not.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“A thorough-paced knave will rarely quarrel with one whom he can cheat: his revenge is plunder; therefore he is usually the most forgiving of beings, upon the principle that if he come to an open rupture, he must defend himself; and this does not suit a man whose vocation it is to keep his hands in the pocket of another.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool; since the most absurd doctrines are not without such evidence as martyrdom can produce. A martyr, therefore, by the mere act of suffering, can prove nothing but his own faith.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“If martyrdom is now on the decline, it is not because martyrs are less zealous, but because martyr-mongers are more wise. The light of intellect has put out the fire of persecution, as other fires are observed to smoulder before the light of the same.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The martyrs to vice far exceed the martyrs to virtue, both in endurance and in number.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“That alliance may be said to have a double tie, where the minds are united as well as the body; and the union will have all its strength when both the links are in perfection together.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“The mob is a monster, with the hands of Briareus, but the head of Polyphemus,--strong to execute, but blind to perceive.”
Source: L.P.
“It is an easy and vulgar thing to please the mob, and not a very arduous task to astonish them; but essentially to benefit and to improve them is a work fraught with difficulty, and teeming with danger.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Neutrality is no favorite with Providence, for we are so formed that it is scarcely possible for us to stand neuter in our hearts, although we may deem it prudent to appear so in our actions”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“He that aspires to be the head of a party will find it more difficult to please his friends than to perplex his foes. He must often act from false reasons which are weak, because he dares not avow the true reasons which are strong.”
Source: 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.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Two things, well considered, would prevent many quarrels: first, to have it well ascertained whether we are not disputing about terms, rather than things; and, secondly, to examine whether that on which we differ is worth contending about.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“If you cannot avoid a quarrel with a blackguard, let your lawyer manage it, rather than yourself. No man sweeps his own chimney, but employs a chimney-sweeper, who has no objection to dirty work, because it is his trade.”
Source: L.P.
“In most quarrels there is a fault on both sides. A quarrel may be compared to a spark, which cannot be produced without a flint, as well as steel. Either of them may hammer on wood forever; no fire will follow.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“We often regret we did not do otherwise, when that very otherwise would, in all probability, have done for us.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Revenge is a much more punctual paymaster than gratitude”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“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.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Secrecy of design, when combined with rapidity of execution, like me column that guided Israel in the deserts, becomes the guardian pillar of light and fire to our friends, a cloud of overwhelming and impenetrable darkness to our enemies.”
“A beautiful woman, if poor, should use double circumspection; for her beauty will tempt others, her poverty herself.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Villainy that is vigilant will be an overmatch for virtue, if she slumber at her post.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The rich are more envied by those who have a little, than by those who have nothing.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The greatest and most amiable privilege which the rich enjoy over the poor is that which they exercise the least--the privilege of making others happy.”
Source: Lacon: or, Many things in few words
