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
Highest
Verbiage
Rest
Clearest
Knowledge
Shortest
Learn
Pretension
Truth
Performance
Nothing
Performances
Road
Mere

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

Image
Pleasure is to women what the sun is to the flower if moderately enjoyed, it beautifies, it refreshes, and it improves if immoderately, it withers, deteriorates and destroys.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
God will excuse our prayers for ourselves whenever we are prevented from them by being occupied in such good works as to entitle us to the prayers of others.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
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
Image
Discretion has been termed the better part of valour, and it is more certain, that diffidence is the better part of knowledge.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Be very slow to believe that you are wiser than all others it is a fatal but common error. Where one has been saved by a true estimation of another's weakness, thousands have been destroyed by a false appreciation of their own strength.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Injuries accompanied with insults are never forgiven: all men, on these occasions, are good haters, and lay out their revenge at compound interest.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Shakespeare, Butler and Bacon have rendered it extremely difficult for all who come after them to be sublime, witty or profound.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Those who have resources within themselves, who can dare to live alone, want friends the least, but, at the same time, best know how to prize them the most. But no company is far preferable to bad, because we are more apt to catch the vices of others than their virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
We are not more ingenious in searching out bad motives for good actions when performed by others, than good motives for bad actions when performed by ourselves.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Moderation is the inseparable companion of wisdom, but with it genius has not even a nodding acquaintance.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Physicians must discover the weaknesses of the human mind, and even condescend to humor them, or they will never be called in to cure the infirmities of the body.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Great minds had rather deserve contemporaneous applause without obtaining it, than obtain without deserving it. If it follow them it is well, but they will not deviate to follow it.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
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
Image
Alas! how has the social spirit of Christianity been perverted by fools at one time, and by knaves and bigots at another by the self-tormentors of the cell, and the all-tormentors of the conclave!
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
Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Some men are very entertaining for a first interview, but after that they are exhausted, and run out on a second meeting we shall find them flat and monotonous like hand-organs, we have heard all their tunes.
Charles Caleb Colton