Charles Caleb Colton (1780–1832) was an English cleric, writer and collector, well known for his eccentricities.
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.
He that will often put eternity and the world before him, and who will dare to look steadfastly at both of them, will find that the more often he contemplates them, the former will grow greater, and the latter less.
It is adverse to talent to be consorted and trained up with inferior minds and inferior companions, however high they may rank. The foal of the racer neither finds out his speed nor calls out his powers if pastured out with the common herd, that are destined for the collar and the yoke.
"Lawyers Are": The only civil delinquents whose judges must of necessity be chosen from (amongst) themselves.
There are three kinds of power,--wealth, strength, and talent; but as old age always weakens, often destroys, the two latter, the aged are induced to cling with the greater avidity to the former.
It is much easier to ruin a man of principle than a man of none, for he may be ruined through his scruples. Knavery is supple and can bend; but honesty is firm and upright, and yields not.
Our wealth is often a snare to ourselves, and always a temptation to others.
Were we as eloquent as angels we still would please people much more by listening rather than talking.
There are male as well as female gossips.
Nobility is a river that sets with a constant and undeviating current, directly into the great Pacific Ocean of Time; but, unlike all other rivers, it is more grand at its source, than at its termination.
Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.
There are three kinds of praise, that which we yield, that which we lend, and that which we pay. We yield it to the powerful from fear, we lend it to the weak from interest, and we pay it to the deserving from gratitude.
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.
Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase.
God is on the side of virtue; for whoever dreads punishment suffers it, and whoever deserves it, dreads it.
Men pursue riches under the idea that their possession will set them at ease, and above the world. But the law of association often makes those who begin by loving gold as a servant finish by becoming themselves its slaves; and independence without wealth is at least as common as wealth without independence.
We should have a glorious conflagration, if all who cannot put fire into their works would only consent to put their works into the fire.
Sincerely to aspire after virtue, is to gain her; and zealously to labour after her wages, is to receive them.
Revenge is a debt, in the paying of which the greatest knave is honest and sincere, and, so far as he is able, punctual.
No disorders have employed so many quacks, as those that have no cure; and no sciences have exercised so many quills, as those that have no certainty.