Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONJustice to my readers compels me to admit that I write because I have nothing to do; justice to myself induces me to add that I will cease to write the moment I have nothing to say.
More Charles Caleb Colton Quotes
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Some read to think, these are rare; some to write, these are common; and some read to talk, and these form the great majority.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
Self-denial is often the sacrifice of one sort of self-love for another.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
Man is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
Light, whether it be material or moral, is the best reformer.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
Eloquence is the language of nature, and cannot be learned in the schools; but rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least will most excel in.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
Honor is unstable and seldom the same; for she feeds upon opinion, and is as fickle as her food.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
A house may draw visitors, but it is the possessor alone that can detain them.
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 -
He that can enjoy the intimacy of the great, and on no occasion disgust them by familiarity, or disgrace himself by servility, proves that he is as perfect a gentleman by nature as his companions are by rank.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
There are three kinds of praise, that which we yield, that which we lend, and that which we pay. We yield it to the powerful from fear, we lend it to the weak from interest, and we pay it to the deserving from gratitude.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
God will excuse our prayers for ourselves whenever we are prevented from them by being occupied in such good works as to entitle us to the prayers of others.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON -
There are three modes of bearing the ills of life; by indifference, which is the most common; by philosophy, which is the most ostentatious; and by religion, which is the most effectual.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON