Charles Caleb Colton
Charles Caleb Colton
Charles Caleb Coltonwas an English cleric, writer and collector, well known for his eccentricities...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
numbers endurance vices
The martyrs to vice far exceed the martyrs to virtue, both in endurance and in number.
ties perfection mind
That alliance may be said to have a double tie, where the minds are united as well as the body; and the union will have all its strength when both the links are in perfection together.
strong hands monsters
The mob is a monster, with the hands of Briareus, but the head of Polyphemus,--strong to execute, but blind to perceive.
benefits tasks easy
It is an easy and vulgar thing to please the mob, and not a very arduous task to astonish them; but essentially to benefit and to improve them is a work fraught with difficulty, and teeming with danger.
men brutes ingratitude
Brutes leave ingratitude to man.
ocean often-is evil
Idleness is the grand Pacific Ocean of life, and in that stagnant abyss the most salutary things produce no good, the most noxious no evil. Vice, indeed, abstractedly considered, may be, and often is engendered in idleness; but the moment it becomes efficiently vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle.
evil decision choices
Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.
inspiration genius may
Extemporaneous and oral harangues will always have this advantage over those that are read from a in manuscript: every burst of eloquence or spark of genius they may contain, however studied they may have been beforehand, will appear to the audience to be the effect of the sudden inspiration of talent.
brain mentor able
Eloquence, to produce her full effect, should start from the head of the orator, as Pallas from the brain of Jove, completely armed and equipped. Diffidence, therefore, which is so able a mentor to the writer, would prove a dangerous counsellor for the orator.
wise art moments
The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read.
cities mind moral
I have found by experience that they who have spent all their lives in cities, improve their talents but impair their virtues; and strengthen their minds but weaken their morals.
justice feelings humanity
There is no cruelty so inexorable and unrelenting as that which proceeds from a bigoted and presumptuous supposition of doing service to God. The victim of the fanatical persecutor will find that the stronger the motives he can urge for mercy are, the weaker will be his chance for obtaining it, for the merit of his destruction will be supposed to rise in value in proportion as it is effected at the expense of every feeling both of justice and of humanity.
down-and fraud gross
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.
hypocrite laughing hypocrisy
If Satan ever laughs, it must be at hypocrites; they are the greatest dupes he has.