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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
Facts
Explain
Littles
Effect
Little
Therefore
Without
Effects
Sometimes
Unless
Must
Worth
Assimilated
Theory
Contradicting
Rather
Phenomena

More quotes by 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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Pride requires very costly food-its keeper's happiness.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The seat of perfect contentment is in the head for every individual is thoroughly satisfied with his own proportion of brains.
Charles Caleb Colton
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To dare to live alone is the rarest courage since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is a common observation that any fool can get money but they are not wise that think so.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Genius, when employed in works whose tendency it is to demoralize and to degrade us, should be contemplated with abhorrence rather than with admiration such a monument of its power, may indeed be stamped with immortality, but like the Coliseum at Rome, we deplore its magnificence because we detest the purposes for which it was designed.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Logic and metaphysics make use of more tools than all the rest of the sciences put together, and do the least work.
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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There are prating coxcombs in the world who would rather talk than listen, although Shakespeare himself were the orator, and human nature the theme!
Charles Caleb Colton
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Sensibility would be a good portress if she had but one hand with her right she opens the door to pleasure, but with her left to pain.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Few things are more agreeable to self-love than revenge, and yet no cause so effectually restrains us from revenge as self-love. And this paradox naturally suggests another that the strength of the community is not unfrequently built upon the weakness of those individuals that compose it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them such persons covet secrets as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice makes concerning wealth. She begins by accumulating power as a means to happiness, and she finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Genius, in one respect, is like gold numbers of persons are constantly writing about both, who have neither.
Charles Caleb Colton
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They that are loudest in their threats are the weakest in the execution of them. It is probable that he who is killed by lightning hears no noise but the thunder-clap which follows, and which most alarms the ignorant, is the surest proof of their safety.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
Charles Caleb Colton
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That author, however, who has thought more than he has read, read more than he has written, and written more than he has published, if he does not command success, has at least deserved it.
Charles Caleb Colton