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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."

“Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Religion

All Quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

“The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Success

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Truth

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Friendship

“Men's arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Men

“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.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Change

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Knowledge

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Knowledge

“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

“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.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Courage

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Truth

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Marriage

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Wisdom

“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.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Best

“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

“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.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Best

“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

“In religion as in politics it so happens that we have less charity for those who believe half our creed, than for those who deny the whole of it.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Politics

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Best

“Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Religion

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

War