“If you would be known and not know vegetate in a village if you would know and not be known live in a city.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“Success seems to be that which forms the distinction between confidence and conceit.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“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
“We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves it is civil war.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“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
“Men will wrangle for religion write for it fight for it die for it anything but live for it.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“The three great apostles of practical atheism that make converts without persecuting and retain them without preaching are Wealth Health and Power.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“We hate some persons because we do not know them and will not know them because we hate them.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“There is a paradox in pride: it makes some men ridiculous but prevents others from becoming so.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“Times of general calamity and confusion have ever been productive of the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storms.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“It is good to act as if. It is even better to grow to the point where it is no longer an act.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“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
“Mystery is not profoundness.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“He that has cut the claws of the lion will not feel quite secure until he has also drawn his teeth.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“Applause is the spur of noble minds the end and aim of weak ones.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“I have found by experience that they who have spent all their lives in cities improve their talents but impair their virtues and strengthen their minds but weaken their morals.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“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
“We owe almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“Did universal charity prevail earth would be a heaven and hell a fable.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“He that will not permit his wealth to do any good for others … cuts himself off from the truest pleasure here and the highest happiness later.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“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
“The man of pleasure by a vain attempt to be more happy than any man can be is often more miserable than most men.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“Happiness … leads none of us by the same route.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“A windmill is eternally at work to accomplish one end although it shifts with every variation of the weathercock and assumes ten different positions in a day.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“Most of our misfortunes are comments of our friends upon them.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“True friendship is like sound health the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“Friendship often ends in love but love in friendship – never.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“Never join with your friend when he abuses his horse or his wife unless the one is to be sold and the other to be buried.”
— Charles Caleb Colton
“True contentment depends not upon what we have a tub was large enough for Diogenes but a world was too little for Alexander.”
— Charles Caleb Colton