Charles Caleb Colton

Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity than straightforward and simple integrity in another.

Friendship of itself a holy tie is made more sacred by adversity.

We ask advice but we mean approbation.

Mystery is not profoundness.

True friendship is like sound health, the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.

There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.

Friendship often ends in love, but love in friendship - never.

Our incomes should be like our shoes, if too small they will gall and pinch us, but if too large they will cause us to stumble and to trip.

Men's arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.

We own almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed.

There are some frauds so well conducted, that it would be stupidity not to be deceived by them.

When millions applaud you seriously ask yourself what harm you have done, and when they disapprove you what good.

Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance.

There are two way of establishing a reputation one to be praised by honest people and the other to be accused by rogues. It is best however to secure the first one because it will always be accompanied by the latter.

Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.

Avarice has ruined more souls than extravagance.

When you have nothing to say say nothing.

The excess of our youth are checks written against our age and they are payable with interest thirty years later.

Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.

Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.

He that knows himself knows others, and he that is ignorant of himself could not write a very profound lecture on other men's heads.

The firmest of friendships have been formed in mutual adversity as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame.

To dare to live alone is the rarest courage, since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field than their own hearts in their closet.

No company is preferable to bad. We are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues as disease is far more contagious than health.

If a horse has four legs and I'm riding it I think I can win.

Silence is foolish if we are wise but wise if we are foolish.

The mistakes of the fool are known to the world but not to himself. The mistakes of the wise man are known to himself but not to the world.

It is always safe to learn even from our enemies, seldom safe to venture to instruct even our friends.

In religion as in politics it so happens that we have less charity for those who believe half our creed than for those who deny the whole of it.

Knowledge is two-fold and consists not only in an affirmation of what is true but in the negation of that which is false.

Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces and which most men throw away.

Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.

Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.

There is this difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man really is so, but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness when bequeathed by those who even alive would part with nothing.

Commerce flourishes by circumstances precarious transitory contingent almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores.

Constant success shows us but one side of the world, adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.

We often pretend to fear what we really despise and more often despise what we really fear.

The study of mathematics like the Nile begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.

The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end.

I'm aiming by the time I'm fifty to stop being an adolescent.

Law and equity are two things which God has joined but which man has put asunder.

Many speak the truth when they say that they despise riches but they mean the riches possessed by others.

Contemporaries appreciate the person rather than their merit posterity will regard the merit rather than the person.

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.

Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in their actions.

The greatest friend of truth is Time her greatest enemy is Prejudice and her constant companion is Humility.

The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.

That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.