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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."

“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

All Quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Friendship

“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

“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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Friendship

“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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Religion

“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

“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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Friendship

“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

“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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Success

“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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

War

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Wisdom

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Knowledge

“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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Age