Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and hell a fable.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon, or Many Things in Few Words
When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
How small a porton of our life it is that we really enjoy. In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age, we are looking backwards to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day, when we have time.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
In all governments, there must of necessity be both the law and the sword; laws without arms would give us not liberty, but licentiousness; and arms without laws, would produce not subjection, but slavery. The law, therefore, should be unto the sword what the handle is to the hatchet; it should direct the stroke and temper the force.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
The greatest friend of Truth is time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
If you have performed an act of great and disinterested virtue, conceal it; if you publish it, you will neither be believed here, nor rewarded hereafter.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
It is a mistake, that a lust for power is the mark of a great mind; for even the weakest have been captivated by it; and for minds of the highest order, it has no charms.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
There is an elasticity in the human mind, capable of bearing much, but which will not show itself, until a certain weight of affliction be put upon it; its powers may be compared to those vehicles whose springs are so contrived that they get on smoothly enough when loaded, but jolt confoundedly when they have nothing to bear.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Were the life of man prolonged, he would become such a proficient in villany, that it would be necessary again to drown or to burn the world. Earth would become an hell, for future rewards, when put off to a great distance, would cease to encourage, and future punishment to alarm.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
There is but one pursuit in life which it is in the power of all to follow, and of all to attain. It is subject to no disappointments, since he that perseveres, makes every difficulty an advancement, and every contest a victory; and this is the pursuit of virtue.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Men are more readily contented with no intellectual light than with a little; and wherever they have been taught to acquire some knowledge in order to please others, they have most generally gone on to acquire more, to please themselves.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
The greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship - never.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Lawyers are the only civil delinquents whose judges must of necessity be chosen from themselves.
Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but--live for it.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Power. like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer; it dignifies meanness; it magnifies littleness; to what is contemptible, it gives authority; to what is low, exaltation. To acquire it, appears not more difficult than to be dispossessed of it when acquired, since it enables the holder to shift his own errors on dependents, and to take their merits to himself. But the miracle of losing it vanishes, when we reflect that we are as liable to fall as to rise, by the treachery of others; and that to say "I am" is language that has been appropriated exclusively to God!
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Honour is unstable and seldom the same; for she feeds upon opinion, and is as fickle as her food.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
All poets pretend to write for immortality, but the whole tribe have no objection to present pay, and present praise.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Times of general calamity and confusion have ever been productive of the greatest minds--The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace, and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storm.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Avarice is a passion full of paradox, a madness full of method; for, although the miser is the most mercenary of all beings, yet he serves the worst master, more faithfully than some Christians do the best, and will take nothing for it. He falls down and worships the God of this world, but will have neither its pomps, its vanities, nor its pleasures, for his trouble. He begins to accumulate treasure as a mean to happiness, and by a common but morbid association, he continues to accumulate it as an end. He lives poor, to die rich; and is the mere jailer of his house, and the turnkey of his wealth. Impoverished by his gold, he slaves harder to imprison it in his chest, than his brother slave to liberate it from the mine.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Hypocrites act by virtue.... They frame many counterfeits of her, with which they make an ostentatious parade, in all public assemblies, and processions; but the original of what they counterfeit, and which may indeed be said to have fallen from heaven, they produce so seldom, that it is cankered by the rust of sloth, and useless from non-application.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
An honest man will continue to be so though surrounded on all sides by rogues.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
There is no quality of the mind, or of the body, that so instantaneously and irresistibly captivates, as wit. An elegant writer has observed that wit may do very well for a mistress, but that he should prefer reason for a wife. He that deserts the latter, and gives himself up entirely to the guidance of the former, will certainly fall into many pitfalls and quagmires, like him who walks by flashes of lightning, rather than the steady beams of the sun.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Hope is a prodigal young heir, and Experience is his banker; but his drafts are seldom honoured, since there is often a heavy balance against him, because he draws largely on a small capital, is not yet in possession, and if he were, would die.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honoured so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Success seems to be that which forms the distinction between confidence and conceit.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Oppression cannot prosper where none will submit to be enslaved.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them, because we hate them.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
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 everything to fear.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
We are all travelling to one destination--happiness; but none are going by the same road.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Pride, like the magnet, constantly points to one object, self; but unlike the magnet, it has no attractive pole, but at all points repels.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
The excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age, payable with interest, about thirty years after date.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
The true motives of our actions, like the real pipes of an organ, are usually concealed. But the gilded and the hollow pretext, is pompously placed in the front of show.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them; such persons covet secrets, as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
False reasoners are often best confuted by giving them the full swing of their own absurdities.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Fortune has been considered the guardian divinity of fools; and, on this score, she has been accused of blindness; but it should rather be adduced as a proof of her sagacity, when she helps those who cannot help themselves.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Reform is a good, replete with paradox; it is a cathartic which our political quacks, like our medical, recommend to others, but will not take themselves; it is admired by all who cannot effect it, and abused by all who can; it is thought pregnant with danger, for all time that is present, but would have been extremely profitable for that which is past, and will be highly salutary for that which is to come; therefore it has been thought expedient for all administrations which have been, or that will be, but by any particular one which is, it is considered, like Scotch grapes, to be very seldom ripe, and by the time it is so, to be quite out of season.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
A youth without fire is followed by an old age without experience.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Sincerely to aspire after virtue, is to gain her; and zealously to labour after her wages, is to receive them.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
A cool blooded and crafty politician, when he would be thoroughly revenged on his enemy, makes the injuries which have been inflicted, not on himself, but on others, the pretext of his attack. He thus engages the world as a partisan in his quarrel, and dignifies his private hate, by giving it the air of disinterested resentment.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
We shall find some things that are true, and some that are new, but very few things that are both true and new.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Men spend their lives in anticipations, in determining to be vastly happy at some period or other, when they have the time. But the present time has one advantage over every other--it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future are not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer tasting them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Adroit observers will find that some who affect to dislike flattery, may yet be flattered indirectly, by a well seasoned abuse and ridicule of their rivals.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
The only things in which we can be said to have any property are our actions. Our thoughts may be bad, yet produce no poison, they may be good, yet produce no fruit. Our riches may be taken from us by misfortune, our reputation by malice, our spirits by calamity, our health by disease, our friends by death. But our actions must follow us beyond the grave; with respect to them alone, we cannot say that we shall carry nothing with us when we die, neither that we shall go naked out of the world. Our actions must clothe us with an immortality, loathsome or glorious; these are the only title-deeds of which we cannot be disinherited; they will have their full weight in the balance of eternity, when every thing else is as nothing; and their value will be confirmed and established by those two sure and sateless destroyers of all other things--Time and Death.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
It is not so difficult a task to plant new truths, as to root out old errors; for there is this paradox in men, they run after that which is new, but are prejudiced in favour of that which is old.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
There are some who write, talk, and think, so much about vice and virtue, that they have no time to practice either the one or the other.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
Theory is worth but little, unless it can explain its own phenomena, and it must effect this without contradicting itself; therefore, the facts are sometimes assimilated to the theory, rather than the theory to the facts.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon
|
