Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Ambition is to the mind, what the cap is to the falcon; it blinds us first, and then compels us to tower, by reason of our blindness. But alas, when we are at the summit of a vain ambition, we are also at the depth of real misery. We are placed where time cannot improve, but must impair us; where chance and change cannot befriend, but may betray us; in short, by attaining all we wish, and gaining all we want, we have only reached a pinnacle, where we have nothing to hope, but every thing to fear.

A free press is the parent of much good in a state. But even a licentious press is a far less evil than a press that is enslaved, because both sides may be heard in the former case, but not in the latter. A licentious press may be an evil, an enslaved press must be so; for an enslaved press may cause error to be more current than wisdom, and wrong more powerful than right; a licentious press cannot efiect these things, for if it give the poison, it gives also the antidote, which an enslaved press withholds. An enslaved press is doubly fatal, it not only takes away the true light, for in that case we might stand still, but it sets up a false one, that decoys us to our destruction.

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

If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; If you would know, and not be known, live in a city.

"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.

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.

Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.

Discretion has been termed the better part of valour, and it is more certain, that diffidence is the better part of knowledge.