Charles Caleb Colton
Charles Caleb Colton
Charles Caleb Coltonwas an English cleric, writer and collector, well known for his eccentricities...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
funny age fifty
I'm aiming by the time I'm fifty to stop being an adolescent.
wise heart wine
Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.
book reading writing
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.
life book logical
Life isn't like a book. Life isn't logical or sensible or orderly. Life is a mess most of the time. And theology must be lived in the midst of that mess.
friendship adversity ties
Friendship, of itself a holy tie, is made more sacred by adversity.
literature stealing plagiarism
If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.
horse thinking winning
If a horse has four legs, and I'm riding it, I think I can win.
genius literature nodding
Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance.
crush war loss
War kills men, and men deplore the loss; but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies.
done literature harm
When millions applaud you seriously ask yourself what harm you have done; and when they disapprove you, what good.
country travel home
Those who visit foreign nations, but associate only with their own country-men, change their climate, but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with traveled bodies, but untravelled minds.
death medicine literature
Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console.
flower thinking may
Of present fame think little, and of future less; the praises that we receive after we are buried, like the flowers that are strewed over our grave, may be gratifying to the living, but they are nothing to the dead.
writing faces privacy
The society of dead authors has this advantage over that of the living: they never flatter us to our faces, nor slander us behind our backs, nor intrude upon our privacy, nor quit their shelves until we take them down.