Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past, even while we attempt to define it.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONRelated Topics
Anand Thakur
Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past, even while we attempt to define it.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Butler compared the tongues of these eternal talkers to race-horses, which go the faster the less weight they carry.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Cruel men are the greatest lovers of Mercy, avaricious men of generosity, and proud men of humility; that is to say, in other, not in themselves.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Insults are engendered from vulgar minds, like toadstools from a dunghill.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Logic and metaphysics make use of more tools than all the rest of the sciences put together, and do the least work.
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
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. Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with our all to keep it.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us – never cease to instruct – never cloy.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
The true motives of our actions, like the real pipes of an organ, are usually concealed; but the gilded and hollow pretext is pompously placed in the front for show.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
The true measure of your character is what you do when nobody’s watching.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
He that is good will infallibly become better, and he that is bad will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue, and time are three things that never stand still.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
No metaphysician ever felt the deficiency of language so much as the grateful.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
The more gross the fraud the more glibly will it go down, and the more greedily be swallowed, since folly will always find faith where impostors will find imprudence.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON