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

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Literature
Bequeathed
Part
Charities
Nothing
Transcendentalism
Even
Selfishness
Would
Generosity
Charity
Essence
Alive
Posthumous

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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None of us are so much praised or censured as we think.
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In civil jurisprudence it too often happens that there is so much law, that there is no room for justice, and that the claimant expires of wrong in the midst of right, as mariners die of thirst in the midst of water.
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Repartee is perfect when it effects its purpose with a double edge. It is the highest order of wit, as it indicates the coolest yet quickest exercise of genius, at a moment when the passions are roused.
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If we look backwards to antiquity it should be as those that are winning a race.
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There can be no Christianity where there is no charity
Charles Caleb Colton
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Five thousand years have added no improvement to the hive of the bee, nor to the house of the beaver but look at the habitations and the achievements of men!
Charles Caleb Colton
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The gamester, if he die a martyr to his profession, is doubly ruined. He adds his soul to every other loss, and by the act of suicide, renounces earth to forfeit Heaven.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Neutrality is no favorite with Providence, for we are so formed that it is scarcely possible for us to stand neuter in our hearts, although we may deem it prudent to appear so in our actions
Charles Caleb Colton
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Like the rainbow, peace rests upon the earth, but its arch is lost in heaven. Heaven bathes it in hues of light--it springs up amid tears and clouds--it is a reflection of the eternal sun--it is an assurance of calm--it is the sign of a great covenant between God and man--it is an emanation from the distant orb of immortal light.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Habit will reconcile us to everything but change
Charles Caleb Colton
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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.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is adverse to talent to be consorted and trained up with inferior minds and inferior companions, however high they may rank. The foal of the racer neither finds out his speed nor calls out his powers if pastured out with the common herd, that are destined for the collar and the yoke.
Charles Caleb Colton
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That extremes beget extremes is an apothegm built on the most profound observation of the human mind.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Wealth is a relative thing since those who have little and want less are richer than those who have much but want more.
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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Those who have finished by making all others think with them, have usually been those who began by daring to think with themselves.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.
Charles Caleb Colton
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So blinded are we by our passions, that we suffer more to be damned than to be saved.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Antithesis may be the blossom of wit, but it will never arrive at maturity unless sound sense be the trunk and truth the root.
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