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We devote the activity of our youth to revelry and the decrepitude of our old age to repentance: and we finish the farce by bequeathing our dead bodies to the chancel, which when living, we interdicted from the church.

Charles Caleb Colton

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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
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Charles Colton
Church
Compensation
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Repentance
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More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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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
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That is true beauty which has not only a substance, but a spirit a beauty that we must intimately know, justly to appreciate.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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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Any one can give advice, such as it is, but only a wise man knows how to profit by it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is seldom that statesmen have the option of choosing between a good and an evil.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Genius in one grand particular is like life. We know nothing of either but by their effects.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Words indeed are but the signs and counters of knowledge, and their currency should be strictly regulated by the capital which they represent.
Charles Caleb Colton
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I have somewhere seen it observed that we should make the same use of a book that the bee does of a flower: she steals sweets from it, but does not injure it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is curious that we pay statesmen for what they say, not for what they do and judge of them from what they do, not from what they say. Hence they have one code of maxims for profession and another for practice, and make up their consciences as the Neapolitans do their beds, with one set of furniture for show and another for use.
Charles Caleb Colton
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A cool blooded and crafty politician, when he would be thoroughly revenged on his enemy, makes the injuries which have been inflicted, not on himself, but on others, the pretext of his attack. He thus engages the world as a partisan in his quarrel, and dignifies his private hate, by giving it the air of disinterested resentment.
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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Mental pleasures never cloy unlike those of the body, they are increased by reputation, approved by reflection, and strengthened by enjoyment.
Charles Caleb Colton
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A high degree of intellectual refinement in the female is the surest pledge society can have for the improvement of the male.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Hope is a prodigal young heir, and experience is his banker.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Evils in the journey of life are like the hills which alarm travelers upon their road they both appear great at a distance, but when we approach them we find that they are far less insurmountable than we had conceived.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Many books owe their success to the good memories of their authors and the bad memories of their readers.
Charles Caleb Colton
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He that is good will infallibly become better, and he that is bad will as certainly become worse for vice, virtue, and time are three things that never stand still.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Some men who know that they are great are so very haughty withal and insufferable that their acquaintance discover their greatness only by the tax of humility which they are obliged to pay as the price of their friendship.
Charles Caleb Colton
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It is a mistake, that a lust for power is the mark of a great mind for even the weakest have been captivated by it and for minds of the highest order, it has no charms.
Charles Caleb Colton
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When you have nothing to say, say nothing a weak defense strengthens your opponent, and silence is less injurious than a bad reply.
Charles Caleb Colton