Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.

Instead of exhibiting talent in the hope that the world would forgive their eccentricities, they have exhibited only their eccentricities, in the hope that the world would give them credit for talent.

It is always safe to learn, even from our enemies, seldom safe to venture to instruct, even our friends.

Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it; anything but live for it.

Drunkenness is the vice of a good constitution or of a bad memory—of a constitution so treacherously good that it never bends till it breaks; or of a memory that recollects the pleasures of getting intoxicated, but forgets the pains of getting sober.

Deliberate with caution, but act with decision; and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.

When you have nothing to say, say nothing; a weak defense strengthens your opponent, and silence is less injurious than a bad reply.

We ask advice, but we mean approbation.

That author, however, who has thought more than he has read, read more than he has written, and written more than he published, if he does not command success, has at least deserved it.

Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship—never.

To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it; the pains of power are real, its pleasures imaginary.

Cicero observed to a degenerate patrician, "I am the first of my family, but you are the last of yours" And since his time, those who value themselves merely on their ancestry, have been compared to potatoes, all that is good of them is under the ground.

No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us.

"Defendit numerus," is the maxim of the foolish; "Deperdit numerus," of the wise. The fact is, that an honest man will continue to be so, though surrounded on all sides by rogues. The whole world is turned upside down once in twenty-four hours; yet no one thinks of standing upon his head, rather than on his heels. He that can be honest, only because every one else is honest, or good, only because all around him are good, might have continued an angel, if he had been born one, but being a man, he will only add to that number, numberless, who go to hell for the bad things they have done, and for the good things which they intended to do.

If we can advance any propositions that are both true and new, these are indisputably our own, by right of discovery; and if we can repeat what is old more briefly and brightly than others, this also becomes our own, by right of conquest.