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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."

“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

All Quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Knowledge

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Truth

“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

“He who studies books alone will know how things ought to be, and he who studies men will know how they are.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Alone

“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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Religion

“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

“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

“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

“Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Happiness

“True friendship is like sound health the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Friendship

“Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Happiness

“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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Patience

“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

“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

“Friendship often ends in love but love in friendship - never.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Friendship

“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

“The society of dead authors has this advantage over that of the living: they never flatter us to our faces, nor slander us behind our backs, nor intrude upon our privacy, nor quit their shelves until we take them down.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Society

“Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Wisdom