Charles Caleb Colton (1780–1832) was an English cleric, writer and collector, well known for his eccentricities.
Butler compared the tongues of these eternal talkers to race-horses, which go the faster the less weight they carry.
Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it; anything but live for it.
Time, the cradle of hope. . . . Wisdom walks before it, opportunity with it, and repentance behind it: he that has made it his friend will have little to fear from his enemies, but he that has made it his enemy will have little to hope from his friends.
The interests of society often render it expedient not to utter the whole truth, the interests of science never: for in this field we have much more to fear from the deficiency of truth than from its abundance.
It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge.
The temple of truth is built indeed of stones of crystal, but, inasmuch as men have been concerned in rearing it, it has been consolidated by a cement composed of baser materials.
He that knows himself, knows others; and he that is ignorant of himself, could not write a very profound lecture on other men's heads.
Despotism can no more exist in a nation until the liberty of the press be destroyed than the night can happen before the sun is set.
Time, the cradle of hope, but the grave of ambition, is the stern corrector of fools, but the salutary counselor of the wise, bringing all they dread to the one, and all they desire to the other.
False reasoners are often best confuted by giving them the full swing of their own absurdities.
Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.
It is good to act as if. It is even better to grow to the point where it is no longer an act.
Revenge is a debt, in the paying of which the greatest knave is honest and sincere, and, so far as he is able, punctual.
Error, when she retraces her steps, has farther to go before she can arrive at truth than ignorance.
Physical courage, which despises all danger, will make a man brave in one way; and moral courage, which despises all opinion, will make a man brave in another.
Posthumous fame is a plant of tardy growth, for our body must be the seed of it; or we may liken it to a torch, which nothing but the last spark of life can light up; or we may compare it to the trumpet of the archangel, for it is blown over the dead; but unlike that awful blast, it is of earth, not of heaven, and can neither rouse nor raise us.
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.
All adverse and depressing influences can be overcome, not by fighting, by by rising above them.
Natural good is' so intimately connected with moral good, and natural evil with moral evil, that I am as certain as if I heard a voice from heaven proclaim it, that God is on the side of virtue. He has learnt much, and has not lived in vain, who has practically discovered that most strict and necessary connection, that does and will ever exist between vice and misery, and virtue and happiness.
Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.