Charles Caleb Colton
Charles Caleb Colton
Charles Caleb Coltonwas an English cleric, writer and collector, well known for his eccentricities...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
book names want
If a book really wants the patronage of a great name, it is a bad book; and if it be a good book, it wants it not.
dull influence authorship
There are both dull correctness and piquant carelessness; it is needless to say which will command the most readers and have the most influence.
law justice water
In civil jurisprudence it too often happens that there is so much law, that there is no room for justice, and that the claimant expires of wrong in the midst of right, as mariners die of thirst in the midst of water.
regret sleep insomnia
Bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret.
men coats shabby
It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat.
men talking two
When we are in the company of sensible men, we ought to be doubly cautious of talking too much, lest we lose two good things, their good opinion and our own improvement; for what we have to say we know, but what they have to say we know not.
fog sun mystery
Mystery magnifies danger as the fog the sun.
children father past
How strange it is that we of the present day are constantly praising that past age which our fathers abused, and as constantly abusing that present age, which our children will praise.
winning race looks
If we look backwards to antiquity it should be as those that are winning a race.
safety ignorant lightning
They that are loudest in their threats are the weakest in the execution of them. It is probable that he who is killed by lightning hears no noise; but the thunder-clap which follows, and which most alarms the ignorant, is the surest proof of their safety.
men years two
No man can promise himself even fifty years of life, but any man may, if he please, live in the proportion of fifty years in forty-let him rise early, that he may have the day before him, and let him make the most of the day, by determining to expend it on two sorts of acquaintance only-those by whom something may be got, and those from whom something maybe learned.
mean secret purpose
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.
heart envy people
Envy ought to have no place allowed it in the hearts of people; for the goods of this present world are so vile and low that they are beneath it; and those of the future world are so vast and exalted that they are above it.
honor fickle opinion
Honor is unstable and seldom the same; for she feeds upon opinion, and is as fickle as her food.