Charles Caleb Colton (1780–1832) was an English cleric, writer and collector, well known for his eccentricities.
There are two things that bestow consequence; great possession, or great debts.
Cruel men are the greatest lovers of Mercy, avaricious men of generosity, and proud men of humility; that is to say, in other, not in themselves.
Wealth is a relative thing since those who have little and want less are richer than those who have much but want more.
Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past, even while we attempt to define it.
Man is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions.
Man, if he compare himself with all that he can see, is at the zenith of power; but if he compare himself with all that he can conceive, he is at the nadir of weakness.
The further we advance in knowledge, the more simplicity shall we discover in those primary rules that regulate all the apparently endless, complicated, and multiform operations of the Godhead.
That is fine benevolence, finely executed, which, like the Nile, comes from hidden sources.
Happiness is that single and glorious thing which is the very light and sun of the whole animated universe; and where she is not it were better that nothing should be.
All wars of interference, arising from an officious intrusion into the concerns of other states; all wars of ambition, carried on for the purposes of aggrandizement; and all wars of aggression, undertaken for the purpose of forcing an assent to this or that set of religious opinions; all such wars are criminal in their very outset, and have hypocrisy for their common base.
In answering an opponent, arrange your ideas, but not your words.
A public debt is a kind of anchor in the storm; but if the anchor be too heavy for the vessel, she will be sunk by that very weight which was intended for her preservation.
When a man has displayed talent in some particular path, and left all competitors behind him in it, the world are too apt to give him credit for universality of genius, and to anticipate for him success in all that he undertakes.
Life isn't like a book. Life isn't logical or sensible or orderly. Life is a mess most of the time. And theology must be lived in the midst of that mess.
It is good to act as if. It is even better to grow to the point where it is no longer an act.
The science of legislation is like that of medicine in one respect: that it is far more easy to point out what will do harm than what will do good.
We are more inclined to hate one another for points on which we differ, than to love one another for points on which we agree. The reason perhaps is this: when we find others that agree with us, we seldom trouble ourselves to confirm that agreement; but when we chance on those who differ from us, we are zealous both to convince and to convert them. Our pride is hurt by the failure, and disappointed pride engenders hatred.
Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.
Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.
Success seems to be that which forms the distinction between confidence and conceit.