Charles Caleb Colton (1780–1832) was an English cleric, writer and collector, well known for his eccentricities. Colton was educated at Eton and King’s College, graduating with a B.A. in 1801 and an M.A. in 1804. In 1801, he was presented by the college with the perpetual curacy of Tiverton’s Prior’s Quarter in Devon, where he lived for many years. He was appointed to the vicarage of Kew and Petersham in 1812. His performance of church-related functions at both locations was erratic: at times conscientious and brilliant while at other times cursory and indulgent. He left formal church service, and England, in 1828. Contemporaries believed that he had fled from his creditors, who took out a legal “docket” against him, identifying him as a wine-merchant.
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The excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age, payable with interest, about thirty years after date.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Youth
Hope is a prodigal young heir, and experience is his banker, but his drafts are seldom honored since there is often a heavy balance against him, because he draws largely on a small capital and is not yet in possession.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Hope
Short as life is, some find it long enough to outlive their characters, their constitutions and their estates.
—Charles Caleb Colton
He who studies books alone will know how things ought to be,
and he who studies men will know how they are.
—Charles Caleb Colton
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.
—Charles Caleb Colton
No two things differ more than hurry and dispatch. Hurry is the mark of a weak mind, dispatch of a strong one. A weak man in office, like a squirrel in a cage, is laboring eternally, but to no purpose, and is in constant motion without getting on a job; like a turnstile, he is in everybody’s way, but stops nobody; he talks a great deal, but says very little; looks into everything but sees nothing; and has a hundred irons in the fire, but very few of them are hot, and with those few that are, he only burns his fingers.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed. Health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Health
He that has never suffered extreme adversity, knows not the full extent of his own depravation.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Adversity, Difficulties
See that your character is right, and in the long run your reputation will be right.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Reputation
Subtract from the great man all that he owes to opportunity, all that he owes to chance, and all that he has gained by the wisdom of his friends and the folly of his enemies, and the giant will often be seen to be a pigmy.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Greatness
Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass
before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.
—Charles Caleb Colton
The gambler is a moral suicide.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: One liners, Gambling
All adverse and depressing influences can be overcome, not by fighting, but by rising above them.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Ambition is to the mind what the cap is to the falcon; it blinds us first, and then compels us to tower by reason of our blindness.
—Charles Caleb Colton
True friendship is like sound health;
the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.
—Charles Caleb Colton
There is this difference between happiness and wisdom, that he that thinks himself the happiest man really is so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.
—Charles Caleb Colton
War kills men, and men deplore the loss; but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies.
—Charles Caleb Colton
There are two modes of establishing our reputation—to be praised by honest men, and to be abused by rogues. It is best, however, to secure the former, because it will invariably be accompanied by the latter.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Praise, Reputation
Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.
—Charles Caleb Colton
There is a 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.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Men spend their lives in anticipation, in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other — it is our own … We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.
—Charles Caleb Colton
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.
—Charles Caleb Colton
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.
—Charles Caleb Colton
We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves; it is civil war.
—Charles Caleb Colton
Topics: Being Ourselves, Self-Discovery
Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.
—Charles Caleb Colton
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