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

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Fine
Literature
Aeroplanes
Real
Apparent
Writing
Editing
Always
Admiration
Proportion
Ease
Difficulty

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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.
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A leveller has long ago been set down as a ridiculous and chimerical being, who, if he could finish his work to-day, would have to begin it again tomorrow.
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Secrecy is the soul of all great designs.
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Unity of opinion is indeed a glorious and desirable thing, and its circle cannot be too strong and extended, if the centre be truth but if the centre be error, the greater the circumference, the greater the evil.
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That is true beauty which has not only a substance, but a spirit a beauty that we must intimately know, justly to appreciate.
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Duke Chartres used to boast that no man could have less real value for character than himself, yet he would gladly give twenty thousand pounds for a good one, because he could immediately make double that sum by means of it.
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It is doubtful whether mankind are most indebted to those who like Bacon and Butler dig the gold from the mine of literature, or to those who, like Paley, purify it, stamp it, fix its real value, and give it currency and utility
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Self-love, in a well-regulated breast, is as the steward of the household, superintending the expenditure, and seeing that benevolence herself should be prudential, in order to be permanent, by providing that the reservoir which feeds should also be fed.
Charles Caleb Colton
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There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Philosophy is a goddess, whose head indeed is in heaven, but whose feet are upon earth she attempts more than she accomplishes, and promises more than she performs.
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It was served of the Jesuits, that they constantly inculcated a thorough contempt of worldly things in their doctrines, but eagerly grasped at them in their lives. They were wise in their generation for they cried down worldly things because they wanted to obtain them, and cried up spiritual things, because they wanted to dispose of them.
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It is best, if possible, to deceive no one for he that ... begins by deceiving others, will end ... by deceiving himself.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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
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I have somewhere seen it observed that we should make the same use of a book that the bee does of a flower: she steals sweets from it, but does not injure it.
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 are ruined, not by what we really want, but by what we think we do therefore never go abroad in search of your wants if they be real wants, they will come home in search of you for he that buys what he does not want, will soon want what he cannot buy.
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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.
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The French have a saying that whatever excellence a man may exhibit in a public station he is very apt to be ridiculous in a private one.
Charles Caleb Colton