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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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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
Priest
Writer
Charles Colton
Easier
Ruin
Principles
Ruined
May
Yield
Knavery
Much
Ruins
Supple
Men
Firm
Scruples
Principle
Upright
Honesty
Yields
None
Bend

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Shakespeare, Butler and Bacon have rendered it extremely difficult for all who come after them to be sublime, witty or profound.
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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.
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Theory is worth but little, unless it can explain its own phenomena, and it must effect this without contradicting itself therefore, the facts are sometimes assimilated to the theory, rather than the theory to the facts.
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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
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Wealth is a relative thing since those who have little and want less are richer than those who have much but want more.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Knavery is supple, and can bend, but honesty is firm and upright and yields not.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Were the life of man prolonged, he would become such a proficient in villainy, that it would become necessary again to drown or to burn the world. Earth would become an hell for future rewards when put off to a great distance, would cease to encourage, and future punishments to alarm.
Charles Caleb Colton
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A coxcomb begins by determining that his own profession is the first and he finishes by deciding that he is the first of profession.
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Those who have finished by making all others think with them, have usually been those who began by daring to think with themselves.
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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
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Love is an alliance of friendship and animalism if the former predominates it is passion exalted and refined if the latter, gross and sensual.
Charles Caleb Colton
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He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice should go a little further, and try to plant a virtue in its place otherwise he will have his labor to renew. A strong soil that has produced weeds may be made to produce wheat with far less difficulty than it would cost to make it produce nothing.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The seat of perfect contentment is in the head for every individual is thoroughly satisfied with his own proportion of brains.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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
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Diffidence is the better part of knowledge.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The Grecian’s maxim would indeed be a sweeping clause in Literature it would reduce many a giant to a pygmy many a speech to a sentence and many a folio to a primer.
Charles Caleb Colton
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If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village if you would know, and not be known, live in a city.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Revenge is a much more punctual paymaster than gratitude
Charles Caleb Colton
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Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Avarice begets more vices than Priam did children and like Priam survives them all. It starves its keeper to surfeit those who wish him dead, and makes him submit to more mortifications to lose heaven than the martyr undergoes to gain it.
Charles Caleb Colton