Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Killed
Surest
Noise
Alarms
Ignorant
Hears
Proof
Threats
Safety
Thunder
Clap
Threat
Execution
Loudest
Speech
Follows
Weakest
Conversation
Lightning
Probable

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

Image
The whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
The inheritance of a distinguished and noble name is a proud inheritance to him who lives worthily of it.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Wit in women is a jewel, which, unlike all others, borrows lustre from its setting, rather than bestows it since nothing is so easy as to fancy a very beautiful woman extremely witty.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
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
Image
Professors in every branch of the sciences, prefer their own theories to truth: the reason is that their theories are private property, but truth is common stock.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
I have found by experience that they who have spent all their lives in cities, improve their talents but impair their virtues and strengthen their minds but weaken their morals.
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
We may anticipate bliss, but who ever drank of that enchanted cup unalloved?
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
The learned languages are indispensable to form the gentleman and the scholar, and are well worth all the labor that they have cost us, provided they are valued not for themselves alone, which would make a pedant, but as a foundation for further acquirements.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
We shall at all times chance upon men of recondite acquirements, but whose qualifications, from the incommunicative and inactive habits of their owners, are as utterly useless to others as though the possessors had them not.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
It is doubtful whether mankind are most indebted to those who like Bacon and Butler dig the gold from the mine of literature, or to those who, like Paley, purify it, stamp it, fix its real value, and give it currency and utility
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Anguish of mind has driven thousands to suicide anguish of body, none. This proves that the health of the mind is of far more consequence to our happiness than the health of the body, although both are deserving of much more attention than either of them receive.
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
Philosophers have widely differed as to the seat of the soul, and St. Paul has told us that out of the heart proceed murmurings but there can be no doubt that 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
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
Image
The acquirements of science may be termed the armour of the mind but that armour would be worse than useless, that cost us all we had, and left us nothing to defend.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Drunkenness is the vice of a good constitution or of a bad memory of a constitution so treacherously good that it never bends till it breaks or of a memory that recollects the pleasures of getting intoxicated, but forgets the pains of getting sober.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
Whenever we find ourselves more inclined to persecute than to persuade, we may then be certain that our zeal has more of pride in it than of charity.
Charles Caleb Colton
Image
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
Image
Honesty is not only the deepest policy, but the highest wisdom since, however difficult it may be for integrity to get on, it is a thousand times more difficult for knavery to get off and no error is more fatal than that of those who think that Virtue has no other reward because they have heard that she is her own.
Charles Caleb Colton