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Theory is worth but little, unless it can explain its own phenomena, and it must effect this without contradicting itself therefore, the facts are sometimes assimilated to the theory, rather than the theory to the facts.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Must
Worth
Assimilated
Theory
Contradicting
Rather
Phenomena
Facts
Explain
Littles
Effect
Little
Therefore
Without
Effects
Sometimes
Unless

More quotes by 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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Novels may teach us as wholesome a moral as the pulpit. There are sermons in stones, in healthy books, and good in everything.
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There are two modes of establishing our reputation to be praised by honest men, and to be abused by rogues.
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True friendship is like sound health the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.
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Instead of exhibiting talent in the hope that the world would forgive their eccentricities, they have exhibited only their eccentricities, in the hope that the world would give them credit for talent.
Charles Caleb Colton
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My lowest days as a Christian have been more fulfilling and rewarding than all the days of glory in the White House.
Charles Caleb Colton
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If you are under obligations to many, it is prudent to postpone the recompensing of one, until it be in your power to remunerate all otherwise you will make more enemies by what you give, than by what you withhold.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The code of poor laws has at length grown up into a tree, which, like the fabulous Upas, overshadows and poisons the land unwholesome expedients were the bud, dilemmas and depravities have been the blossom, and danger and despair are the bitter fruit.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Sturdy beggars can bear stout denials.
Charles Caleb Colton
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No company is preferable to bad. We are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Insults are engendered from vulgar minds, like toadstools from a dunghill.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Envy is the coward side of Hate, And all her ways are bleak and desolate.
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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If our eloquence be directed above the heads of our hearers, we shall do no execution. By pointing our arguments low, we stand a chance of hitting their hearts as well as their heads. In addressing angels, we could hardly raise our eloquence too high but we must remember that men are not angels.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Neither can we admit that definition of genius that some would propose--a power to accomplish all that we undertake for we might multiply examples to prove that this definition of genius contains more than the thing defined. Cicero failed in poetry, Pope in painting, Addison in oratory yet it would be harsh to deny genius to these men.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The good opinion of our fellow men is the strongest, though not the purest motive to virtue.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Those that will not permit their wealth to do any good for others. . . cut themselves off from the truest pleasure here and the highest happiness later.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is more easy to forgive the weak who have injured us than the powerful whom we have injured.
Charles Caleb Colton
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If a horse has four legs, and I'm riding it, I think I can win.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Envy, if surrounded on all sides by the brightness of another's prosperity, like the scorpion confined within a circle of fire, will sting itself to death.
Charles Caleb Colton