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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

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Within
Surrounded
Death
Circle
Another
Circles
Scorpion
Like
Envy
Scorpions
Prosperity
Sting
Gratitude
Envied
Sides
Brightness
Fire
Confined

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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Make no enemies he is insignificant indeed that can do thee no harm.
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Observation made in the cloister or in the desert will generally be as obscure as the one and as barren as the other but he that would paint with his pencil must study originals, and not be over-fearful of a little dust.
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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.
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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.
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Opinions, like showers, are generated in high places, but they invariably descend into lower ones, and ultimately flow down to the people as rain unto the sea.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Some philosophers would give a sex to revenge, and appropriate it almost exclusively to the female mind. But, like most other vices, it is of both genders yet, because wounded vanity and slighted love are the two most powerful excitements to revenge, it has been thought, perhaps, to rage with more violence in the female heart.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The sceptic, when he plunges into the depths of infidelity, like the miser who leaps from the shipwreck, will find that the treasures which he bears about him will only sink him deeper in the abyss.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Like the rainbow, peace rests upon the earth, but its arch is lost in heaven. Heaven bathes it in hues of light--it springs up amid tears and clouds--it is a reflection of the eternal sun--it is an assurance of calm--it is the sign of a great covenant between God and man--it is an emanation from the distant orb of immortal light.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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
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The press is the foe of rhetoric, but the friend of reason.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Of all the faculties of the mind, memory is the first that flourishes, and the first that dies.
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War kills men, and men deplore the loss but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies.
Charles Caleb Colton
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When certain persons abuse us, let us ask ourselves what description of characters it is that they admire we shall often find this a very consolatory question.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is much easier to ruin a man of principle than a man of none, for he may be ruined through his scruples. Knavery is supple and can bend but honesty is firm and upright, and yields not.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Men's arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The more gross the fraud the more glibly will it go down, and the more greedily be swallowed, since folly will always find faith where impostors will find imprudence.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Some frauds succeed from the apparent candor, the open confidence, and the full blaze of ingenuousness that is thrown around them. The slightest mystery would excite suspicion and ruin all. Such stratagems may be compared to the stars they are discoverable by darkness and hidden only by light.
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Villains are usually the worst casuists, and rush into crimes to avoid less. Henry VIII. committed murder to avoid the imputation of adultery and in our times, those who commit the latter crime attempt to wash off the stain of seducing the wife by signifying their readiness to shoot the husband.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Hurry is the mark of a weak mind, dispatch of a strong one.
Charles Caleb Colton