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

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Ends
Minuteness
Like
Nile
Magnificence
Mathematical
Math
Begins
Mathematics
Study

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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A wise man may be duped as well as a fool but the fool publishes the triumph of his deceiver the wise man is silent, and denies that triumph to an enemy which he would hardly concede to a friend a triumph that proclaims his own defeat.
Charles Caleb Colton
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He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice should go a little further, and try to plant a virtue in its place otherwise he will have his labor to renew. A strong soil that has produced weeds may be made to produce wheat with far less difficulty than it would cost to make it produce nothing.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Avarice has ruined more men than prodigality, and the blindest thoughtlessness of expenditure has not destroyed so many fortunes as the calculating but insatiable lust of accumulation.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Physicians must discover the weaknesses of the human mind, and even condescend to humor them, or they will never be called in to cure the infirmities of the body.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The temple of truth is built indeed of stones of crystal, but, inasmuch as men have been concerned in rearing it, it has been consolidated by a cement composed of baser materials.
Charles Caleb Colton
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All poets pretend to write for immortality, but the whole tribe have no objection to present pay, and present praise. Lord Burleigh is not the only statesman who has thought one hundred pounds too much for a song, though sung by Spenser although Oliver Goldsmith is the only poet who ever considered himself to have been overpaid.
Charles Caleb Colton
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To judge by the event is an error all commit: for in every instance courage, if crowned with success, is heroism if clouded by defeat, temerity. When Nelson fought his battle in the Sound, it was the result alone that decided whether he was to kiss a hand at court or a rod at a court-martial.
Charles Caleb Colton
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He that studies books alone, will know how things ought to be and he that studies men, will know how things are.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is not so difficult a task to plant new truths, as to root out old errors for there is this paradox in men, they run after that which is new, but are prejudiced in favor of that which is old.
Charles Caleb Colton
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He [the miser] falls down and worships the god of this world, but will have neither its pomps, its vanities nor its pleasures for his trouble.
Charles Caleb Colton
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A wise minister would rather preserve peace than gain a victory, because he knows that even the most successful war leaves nations generally more poor, always more profligate, than it found them.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Of all the marvelous works of God, perhaps the one angels view with the most supreme astonishment, is a proud man.
Charles Caleb Colton
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When we are in the company of sensible men, we ought to be doubly cautious of talking too much, lest we lose two good things, their good opinion and our own improvement for what we have to say we know, but what they have to say we know not.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Pedantry crams our heads with learned lumber and takes out our brains to make room for it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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A power above all human responsibility ought to be above all human attainment.
Charles Caleb Colton
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In cases of doubtful morality, it is usual to say is there any harm in doing this? This question may sometimes be best answered by asking ourselves another is there any harm in letting it alone?
Charles Caleb Colton
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Precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity as to those mysterious powers assumed by others.
Charles Caleb Colton
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We shall at all times chance upon men of recondite acquirements, but whose qualifications, from the incommunicative and inactive habits of their owners, are as utterly useless to others as though the possessors had them not.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Novels may teach us as wholesome a moral as the pulpit. There are sermons in stones, in healthy books, and good in everything.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Secrecy is the soul of all great designs.
Charles Caleb Colton