Charles Caleb Colton

Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.

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.

Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and hell a fable.

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.

Patience is the support of weakness, impatience the ruin of strength.

Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.

Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route.

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.

War kills men and men deplore the loss, but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants and so saves societies.

It is better to meet danger than to wait for it. He that is on a lee shore and foresees a hurricane, stands out to sea and encounters a storm to avoid a shipwreck.

Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride.

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.

We hate some persons because we do not know them, and will not know them because we hate them.

Physical courage which despises all danger will make a man brave in one way, and moral courage which despises all opinion will make a man brave in another.

He who studies books alone will know how things ought to be and he who studies men will know how they are.

Books like friends should be few and well chosen. Like friends too we should return to them again and again, for like true friends they will never fail us - never cease to instruct - never cloy.

Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always, for cowardice sometimes prevents it, since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live.

Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty, it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.

He that is good will infallibly become better and he that is bad will as certainly become worse, for vice virtue and time are three things that never stand still.

There are three difficulties in authorship: to write anything worth publishing to find honest men to publish it and to find sensible men to read it.