Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

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.

Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.

An elegant writer has observed, that wit may do very well for a mistress, but that he should prefer reason for a wife.

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

A feast is more fatal to love than a fast, and a surfeit than a starvation.

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.

From the preponderance of talent, we may always infer the soundness and vigour of the commonwealth; but from the preponderance of riches, its dotage and degeneration.

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.

We ask advice, but we mean approbation.

With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid, than which to choose; for good books are as scarce as good companions.

Pedantry crams our heads with learned lumber, and takes out our brains to make room for it.

Pedantry prides herself on being wrong by rules; while common sense is contented to be right, without them.

This tendency, however, to ascribe an universality of genius to great men, led Dryden to affirm, on the strength of two smart satyrical lines, that Virgil could have written a satire equal to Juvenal. But, with all due deference to Dryden, I conceive it much more manifest, that Juvenal could have written a better epic than Virgil, than that Virgil could have written a satire equal to Juvenal. Juvenal has many passages of the moral sublime far superior to any that can be found in Virgil, who, indeed, seldom attempts a higher flight than the sublime of description. Had Lucan lived, he might have rivalled them both, as he has all the vigour of the one, and time might have furnished him with the taste and elegance of the other.

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them; such persons covet secrets as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation.