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Charles Caleb Colton

41 quotes

English cleric, writer and collector Charles Caleb Colton has a gift for language that makes complex ideas feel instantly clear. Celebrated for his eccentricities, Charles Caleb Colton brought that same intensity to the written and spoken word. Explore 52 quotes by Charles Caleb Colton on subjects including Men, Happiness, Best, Wisdom, and Religion — each one a window into a distinctive way of seeing the world. Among their most shared lines: "In life we shall find many men that are great, and some that are good, but very few men that are both great and good."

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Truth

All Quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

“Friendship, of itself a holy tie, is made more sacred by adversity.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Friendship

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Knowledge

“In life we shall find many men that are great, and some that are good, but very few men that are both great and good.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Men

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Knowledge

“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.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Health

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Wisdom

“Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Men

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Fear

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Success

“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.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Happiness

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Age

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Truth

“To dare to live alone is the rarest courage since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Alone

“Of present fame think little, and of future less the praises that we receive after we are buried, like the flowers that are strewed over our grave, may be gratifying to the living, but they are nothing to the dead.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Future

“Patience is the support of weakness impatience the ruin of strength.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Patience

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Religion

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Best

“Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Best

“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.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Love

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Happiness