Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONSuicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONThere are male as well as female gossips.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONThere are prating coxcombs in the world who would rather talk than listen, although Shakespeare himself were the orator, and human nature the theme!
CHARLES CALEB COLTONMost plagiarists, like the drone, have neither taste to select, industry to acquire, nor skill to improve, but impudently pilfer the honey ready prepared, from the hive.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONThere 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 COLTONThe awkwardness and embarrassment which all feel on beginning to write, when they themselves are the theme, ought to serve as a hint to author’s that self is a subject they ought very rarely to descant upon.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONIt is with antiquity as with ancestry, nations are proud of the one, and individuals of the other; but if they are nothing in themselves, that which is their pride ought to be their humiliation.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONIf you are under obligations to many, it is prudent to postpone the recompensing of one, until it be in your power to remunerate all; otherwise you will make more enemies by what you give, than by what you withhold.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONThe rich are more envied by those who have a little, than by those who have nothing.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONThe art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONThe 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 COLTONThere is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONIt is the briefest yet wisest maxim which tells us to meddle not.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONFortune, like other females, prefers a lover to a master, and submits with impatience to control; but he that wooes her with opportunity and importunity will seldom court her in vain.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONThere were moments of despondency when Shakespeare thought himself no poet, and Raphael no painter; when the greatest wits have doubted the excellence of their happiest efforts.
CHARLES CALEB COLTONThe two most precious things this side of the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON