Charles Caleb Colton Quotes - Page 24

• Knavery is supple, and can bend, but honesty is firm and upright and yields not.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Honesty, Yield, Knavery

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”

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• When we feel a strong desire to thrust our advice upon others, it is usually because we suspect their weakness; but we ought rather to suspect our own.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Strong, Advice, Desire

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”

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• Princes rule the people, and their own passions rule Princes; but Providence can over-rule the whole, and draw the instruments of his inscrutable purposes from the vices, no less than the virtues of Kings.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Kings, Passion, People

  Philip Dormer Stanhope (4th earl of Chesterfield.), Charles Caleb Colton (1861). “Lord Chesterfield's advice to his son on men and manners. To which are added, selections from Colton's 'Lacon'.”, p.206

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• A thorough-paced knave will rarely quarrel with one whom he can cheat: his revenge is plunder; therefore he is usually the most forgiving of beings, upon the principle that if he come to an open rupture, he must defend himself; and this does not suit a man whose vocation it is to keep his hands in the pocket of another.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Revenge, Men, Hands

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”

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• Pity a thing often avowed, seldom felt; hatred is a thing often felt, seldom avowed.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Hate, Hatred, Pity

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.200

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• Precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity as to those mysterious powers assumed by others.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Intellectual, Atheism, Weakness

  Charles Caleb Colton (1828). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words Addressed to Those who Think”, p.76

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• Idleness is the grand Pacific Ocean of life, and in that stagnant abyss the most salutary things produce no good, the most noxious no evil. Vice, indeed, abstractedly considered, may be, and often is engendered in idleness; but the moment it becomes efficiently vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Ocean, Often Is, Evil

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.312

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• True goodness is not without that germ of greatness that can bear with patience the mistakes of the ignorant.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Mistake, Greatness, Ignorant

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”

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• If Satan ever laughs, it must be at hypocrites; they are the greatest dupes he has.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Hypocrite, Laughing, Hypocrisy

  Charles Caleb COLTON (1849). “L.P.”, p.221

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• False reasoners are often best confuted by giving them the full swing of their own absurdities.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Swings, Giving, Reason

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.57

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• When certain persons abuse us, let us ask ourselves what description of characters it is that they admire; we shall often find this a very consolatory question.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Character, Abuse, Criticism

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.305

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• To be continually subject to the breath of slander, will tarnish the purest virtue, as a constant exposure to the atmosphere will obscure the brightness of the finest gold; but in either case, the real value of both continues the same, although the currency may be somewhat impeded.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Real, Atmosphere, Gold

  Charles Caleb COLTON (1849). “L.P.”, p.181

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• Eloquence, to produce her full effect, should start from the head of the orator, as Pallas from the brain of Jove, completely armed and equipped. Diffidence, therefore, which is so able a mentor to the writer, would prove a dangerous counsellor for the orator.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Brain, Mentor, Able

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.71

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• 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.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Men, Giving, Genius

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.181

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• He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool; since the most absurd doctrines are not without such evidence as martyrdom can produce. A martyr, therefore, by the mere act of suffering, can prove nothing but his own faith.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Mean, Suffering, Doctrine

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.199

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• There is but one pursuit in life which it is in the power of all to follow, and of all to attain. It is subject to no disappointments, since he that perseveres, makes every difficulty an advancement, and every contest a victory; and this is the pursuit of virtue.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Disappointment, Victory, Advancement

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.40

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• Public charities and benevolent associations for the gratuitous relief of every species of distress, are peculiar to Christianity; no other system of civil or religious policy has originated them; they form its highest praise and characteristic feature.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Religious, Relief, Peculiar

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.205

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• A cool blooded and crafty politician, when he would be thoroughly revenged on his enemy, makes the injuries which have been inflicted, not on himself, but on others, the pretext of his attack. He thus engages the world as a partisan in his quarrel, and dignifies his private hate, by giving it the air of disinterested resentment.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Hate, Air, Giving

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.59

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• Brutes leave ingratitude to man.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Men, Brutes, Ingratitude

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• Calumny crosses oceans, scales mountains and traverses deserts, with greater ease than the Scythian Abaris, and like him, rides upon a poisoned arrow.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Ocean, Arrows, Mountain

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.459

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• The moral cement of all society is virtue; it unites and preserves, while vice separates and destroys.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Vices, Moral, Virtue

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”, p.103

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• Some men of a secluded and studious life, have sent forth from their closet or their cloister, rays of intellectual light that have agitated courts, and revolutionized kingdoms; like the moon, that far removed from the ocean, and shining upon it with a serene and sober light, is the chief cause of all those ebbings and flowings which incessantly disturb that world of waters.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Ocean, Moon, Men

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• There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Truth, Men, Despise

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”, p.63

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• The upright, if he suffer calumny to move him, fears the tongue of man more than the eye of God.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Moving, Eye, Men

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.457

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• That theatrical kind of virtue, which requires publicity for its stage, and an applauding world for its audience, could not be depended on, in the secrecy of solitude, or the retirement of a desert.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Retirement, Solitude, Desert

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.135

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