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We must be careful how we flatter fools too little, or wise men too much, for the flatterer must act the very reverse of the physician, and administer the strongest dose only to the weakest patient.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
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Charles Colton
Fool
Dose
Wise
Flattery
Littles
Physicians
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Weakest
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A coxcomb begins by determining that his own profession is the first and he finishes by deciding that he is the first of profession.
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Idleness is the grand Pacific Ocean of life, and in that stagnant abyss the most salutary things produce no good, the most noxious no evil. Vice, indeed, abstractedly considered, may be, and often is engendered in idleness but the moment it becomes efficiently vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle.
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It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge.
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In science, reason is the guide in poetry, taste. The object of the one is truth, which is uniform and indivisible the object of the other is beauty, which is multiform and varied.
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Drunkenness is the vice of a good constitution or of a bad memory of a constitution so treacherously good that it never bends till it breaks or of a memory that recollects the pleasures of getting intoxicated, but forgets the pains of getting sober.
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.
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It is far more easy to acquire a fortune like a knave, than to expend it, like a gentleman.
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The good opinion of our fellow men is the strongest, though not the purest motive to virtue.
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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.
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War kills men, and men deplore the loss but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies.
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It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat.
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Constant success shows us but one side of the world. For as it surrounds us with friends who will tell us only our merits, so it silences those enemies from whom alone we can learn our defects.
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Diffidence is the better part of knowledge.
Charles Caleb Colton
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There are both dull correctness and piquant carelessness it is needless to say which will command the most readers and have the most influence.
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He that will often put eternity and the world before him, and who will dare to look steadfastly at both of them, will find that the more often he contemplates them, the former will grow greater, and the latter less.
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In the pursuit of knowledge, follow it wherever it is to be found like fern, it is the produce of all climates, and like coin, its circulation is not restricted to any particular class.
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Most men know what they hate, few what they love.
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Philosophers have widely differed as to the seat of the soul, and St. Paul has told us that out of the heart proceed murmurings but there can be no doubt that the seat of perfect contentment is in the head, for every individual is thoroughly satisfied with his own proportion of brains.
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We may anticipate bliss, but who ever drank of that enchanted cup unalloved?
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Self-denial is often the sacrifice of one sort of self-love for another.
Charles Caleb Colton