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Charles Caleb Colton

Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

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Famous Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

“The learned languages are indispensable to form the gentleman and the scholar, and are well worth all the labor that they have cost us, provided they are valued not for themselves alone, which would make a pedant, but as a foundation for further acquirements.”

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Book:Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
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“There is no quality of the mind, or of the body, that so instantaneously and irresistibly captivates, as wit. An elegant writer has observed that wit may do very well for a mistress, but that he should prefer reason for a wife. He that deserts the latter, and gives himself up entirely to the guidance of the former, will certainly fall into many pitfalls and quagmires, like him who walks by flashes of lightning, rather than the steady beams of the sun.”

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Book:Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
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“For all the practical purposes of life, truth might as well be in a prison as in the folio of a schoolman; and those who release her from her cobwebbed shelf and teach her to live with men have the merit of liberating, if not of discovering, her.”

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Book:Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
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“Living authors, therefore, are usually, bad companions. If they have not gained character, they seek to do so by methods often ridiculous, always disgusting; and if they have established a character, they are silent for fear of losing by their tongue what they have acquired by their pen--for many authors converse much more foolishly than Goldsmith, who have never written half so well.”

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Book:Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
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“The cynic who twitted Aristippus by observing that the philosopher who could dine on herbs might despise the company of a king, was well replied to by Aristippus, when he remarked that the philosopher who could enjoy the company or a king might also despise a dinner of herbs.”

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Book:Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
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“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.”

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Book:Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
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“We injure mysteries, which are matters of faith, by any attempt at explanation in order to make them matters of reason. Could they be explained, they would cease to be mysteries; and it has been well said that a thing is not necessarily against reason because it happens to be above it.”

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Book:Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
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“If our eloquence be directed above the heads of our hearers, we shall do no execution. By pointing our arguments low, we stand a chance of hitting their hearts as well as their heads. In addressing angels, we could hardly raise our eloquence too high; but we must remember that men are not angels.”

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Book:Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
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“Some well-meaning Christians tremble for their salvation, because they have never gone through that valley of tears and of sorrow, which they have been taught to consider as an ordeal that must be passed through before they can arrive at regeneration. To satisfy such minds, it may be observed, that the slightest sorrow for sin is sufficient, if it produce amendment, and that the greatest is insufficient, if it do not.”

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Book:Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
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“Self-love, in a well-regulated breast, is as the steward of the household, superintending the expenditure, and seeing that benevolence herself should be prudential, in order to be permanent, by providing that the reservoir which feeds should also be fed.”

ShouldWellsSelfOrderSeeingSelf LovePermanentBreastsFedsHouseholdProvidingBenevolenceExpendituresReservoirsStewards
Book:Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
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