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Charles Caleb Colton

Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

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Famous Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

“That an author's work is the mirror of his mind is a position that has led to very false conclusions. If Satan himself were to write a book it would be in praise of virtue, because the good would purchase it for use, and the bad for ostentation.”

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Book:Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
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“All poets pretend to write for immortality, but the whole tribe have no objection to present pay, and present praise. Lord Burleigh is not the only statesman who has thought one hundred pounds too much for a song, though sung by Spenser; although Oliver Goldsmith is the only poet who ever considered himself to have been overpaid.”

WritingHas BeensWholeSongPayLordToo MuchPoetHundredPraiseImmortalityPoundsTribesStatesmenObjectionsSpenser
Book:Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
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“Perhaps that is nearly the perfection of good writing which is original, but whose truth alone prevents the reader from suspecting that it is so; and which effects that for knowledge which the lens effects for the sunbeam, when it condenses its brightness in order to increase its force.”

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Book:Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
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“Some authors write nonsense in a clear style, and others sense in an obscure one; some can reason without being able to persuade, others can persuade without being able to reason; some dive so deep that they descend into darkness, and others soar so high that they give us no light; and some, in a vain attempt to be cutting and dry, give us only that which is cut and dried. We should labor, therefore, to treat with ease of things that are difficult; with familiarity, of things that are novel; and with perspicuity, of things that are profound.”

GivingShouldWritingReasonLightAbleDifficultDarknessNovelClearCuttingStyleLaborTreatsProfoundVainEaseDryNonsenseObscureSoarFamiliarity
Book:Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
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“When I meet with any persons who write obscurely or converse confusedly, I am apt to suspect two things; first, that such persons do not understand themselves; and secondly, that they are not worthy of being understood by others.”

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Book:Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
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“There are three difficulties in authorship;-to write any thing worth the publishing-to find honest men to publish it -and to get sensible men to read it. 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 the Thing played upon.”

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Author:Charles Caleb Colton
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“No men deserve the title of infidels so little as those to whom it has been usually applied; let any of those who renounce Christianity, write fairly down in a book all the absurdities that they believe instead of it, and they will find that it requires more faith to reject Christianity than to embrace it.”

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