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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.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Book
Library
Well
Fail
Never
Failing
Like
Return
Books
Cloy
Friends
Instruct
True
Cease
Wells
Chosen

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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The avarice of the miser may be termed the grand sepulchral of all his other passions, as they successively decay.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is a mortifying truth, and ought to teach the wisest of us humility, that many of the most valuable discoveries have been the result of chance rather than of contemplation, and of accident rather than of design.
Charles Caleb Colton
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He that studies only men will get the body of knowledge without the soul and he that studies only books, the soul without the body.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Ignorance lies at the bottom of all human knowledge, and the deeper we penetrate, the nearer we arrive unto it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Men of great and shining qualities do not always succeed in life, but the fault lies more often in themselves than in others.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow but the misfortune is that in this particular case, the substance belongs to the shadow, the emptiness to its cause.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Secrecy is the soul of all great designs. Perhaps more has been effected by concealing our own intentions than by discovering those of our enemy.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Jealousy is sustained as often by pride as by affection.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The family is the most basic unit of government. As the first community to which a person is attached and the first authority under which a person learns to live, the family establishes society's most basic values.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Were the life of man prolonged, he would become such a proficient in villainy, that it would become necessary again to drown or to burn the world. Earth would become an hell for future rewards when put off to a great distance, would cease to encourage, and future punishments to alarm.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Logic is a large drawer, containing some useful instruments, and many more that are superfluous. A wise man will look into it for two purposes, to avail himself of those instruments that are really useful, and to admire the ingenuity with which those that are not so, are assorted and arranged.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Despotism can no more exist in a nation until the liberty of the press be destroyed than the night can happen before the sun is set.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is curious that we pay statesmen for what they say, not for what they do and judge of them from what they do, not from what they say. Hence they have one code of maxims for profession and another for practice, and make up their consciences as the Neapolitans do their beds, with one set of furniture for show and another for use.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Observation made in the cloister or in the desert will generally be as obscure as the one and as barren as the other but he that would paint with his pencil must study originals, and not be over-fearful of a little dust.
Charles Caleb Colton
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A cool blooded and crafty politician, when he would be thoroughly revenged on his enemy, makes the injuries which have been inflicted, not on himself, but on others, the pretext of his attack. He thus engages the world as a partisan in his quarrel, and dignifies his private hate, by giving it the air of disinterested resentment.
Charles Caleb Colton
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As that gallant can best affect a pretended passion for one woman who has no true love for another, so he that has no real esteem for any of the virtues can best assume the appearance of them all.
Charles Caleb Colton