Quote

The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing.

Charles Caleb Colton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Nothing
Performances
Road
Mere
Highest
Verbiage
Rest
Clearest
Knowledge
Shortest
Learn
Pretension
Truth
Performance

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

Image
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
Image
The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
The integrity that lives only on opinion would starve without it.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
A public debt is a kind of anchor in the storm but if the anchor be too heavy for the vessel, she will be sunk by that very weight which was intended for her preservation.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Mystery magnifies danger, as a fog the sun, the hand that warned Belshazzar derived its horrifying effect from the want of a body.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy but I will remember, and this I owe to myself.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Physical courage, which despises all danger, will make a man brave in one way and moral courage, which despises all opinion, will make a man brave in another.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
We should not be too niggardly in our praise, for men will do more to support a character than to raise one.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
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
Image
Time, the cradle of hope, but the grave of ambition, is the stern corrector of fools, but the salutary counselor of the wise, bringing all they dread to the one, and all they desire to the other.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
As we ascend in society, like those who climb a mountain, we shall find that the line of perpetual congelation commences with the higher circles and the nearer we approach to the grand luminary the court, the more frigidity and apathy shall we experience.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
As that gallant can best affect a pretended passion for one woman who has no true love for another, so he that has no real esteem for any of the virtues can best assume the appearance of them all.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
In death itself there can be nothing terrible, for the act of death annihilates sensation but there are many roads to death, and some of them justly formidable, even to the bravest.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
The seat of perfect contentment is in the head for every individual is thoroughly satisfied with his own proportion of brains.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
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.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
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.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Jealousy is sustained as often by pride as by affection.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Posthumous fame is a plant of tardy growth, for our body must be the seed of it or we may liken it to a torch, which nothing but the last spark of life can light up or we may compare it to the trumpet of the archangel, for it is blown over the dead but unlike that awful blast, it is of earth, not of heaven, and can neither rouse nor raise us.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
The awkwardness and embarrassment which all feel on beginning to write, when they themselves are the theme, ought to serve as a hint to author's that self is a subject they ought very rarely to descant upon.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
A Christian builds his fortitude on a better foundation than stoicism he is pleased with every thing that happens, because he knows it could not happen unless it first pleased God, and that which pleases Him must be best.
Charles Caleb Colton