Charles Caleb Colton

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

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

There are three modes of bearing the ills of life, by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion.

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

There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.

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

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.

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

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

We ask advice, but we mean approbation.

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

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

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.

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

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

He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place.

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

To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread.

True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.

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

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.

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.

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.

Justice to my readers compels me to admit that I write because I have nothing to do; justice to myself induces me to add that I will cease to write the moment I have nothing to say.

If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; if you would know, and not be known, live in a city.

To know a man, observe how he wins his object, rather than how he loses it; for when we fail, our pride supports us - when we succeed, it betrays us.

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.

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.

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

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

Mystery is not profoundness.

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.

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.

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.

To write what is worth publishing, to find honest people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it, are the three great difficulties in being an author.

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

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.

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.

If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself; all that runs over will be yours.

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

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

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

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

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

Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.