Charles Caleb Colton

The seeds of repentance are sown in youth by pleasure, but the harvest is reaped in age by pain.

Charles Caleb Colton

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.

Charles Caleb Colton

The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum.

Charles Caleb Colton

The 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 Colton

The 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

The worst thing that can be said of the most powerful is that they can take your life; but the same can be said of the most weak.

Charles Caleb Colton

Theories are private property, but truth is common stock.

Charles Caleb Colton

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

There are many that despise half the world; but if there be any that despise the whole of it, it is because the other half despises them.

Charles Caleb Colton

There are three kinds of power – wealth, strength, and talent; but as old age always weakens, often destroys, the two latter, the aged are induced to cling with the greater avidity to the former.

Charles Caleb Colton