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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."

“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

All Quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Friendship

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Knowledge

“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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Success

“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 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

“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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Patience

“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

“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

“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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Truth

“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

“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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

War

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Knowledge

“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

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Friendship

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

— Charles Caleb Colton

Best

“Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.”

— Charles Caleb Colton

Men