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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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Charles Caleb Colton
Died: 1832
Died: January 1
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More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

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We ask advice but we mean approbation.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Attempts at reform, when they fail, strengthen despotism, as he that struggles tightens those cords he does not succeed in breaking.
Charles Caleb Colton
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As a man of pleasure, by a vain attempt to be more happy than any man can be, is often more miserable than most men are, so the sceptic, in a vain attempt to be wise beyond what is permitted to man, plunges into a darkness more deplorable, and a blindness more incurable than that of the common herd, whom he despises, and would fain instruct.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Sincerely to aspire after virtue, is to gain her and zealously to labour after her wages, is to receive them.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Envy ought to have no place allowed it in the hearts of people for the goods of this present world are so vile and low that they are beneath it and those of the future world are so vast and exalted that they are above it.
Charles Caleb Colton
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We must be careful how we flatter fools too little, or wise men too much, for the flatterer must act the very reverse of the physician, and administer the strongest dose only to the weakest patient.
Charles Caleb Colton
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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.
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.
Charles Caleb Colton
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To be continually subject to the breath of slander, will tarnish the purest virtue, as a constant exposure to the atmosphere will obscure the brightness of the finest gold but in either case, the real value of both continues the same, although the currency may be somewhat impeded.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Knowledge is two-fold, and consists not only in an affirmation of what is true, but in the negation of that which is false.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Time, the cradle of hope, but the grave of ambition, is the stern corrector of fools, but the salutary counselor of the wise, bringing all they dread to the one, and all they desire to the other.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Constant success shows us but one side of the world adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.
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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A leveller has long ago been set down as a ridiculous and chimerical being, who, if he could finish his work to-day, would have to begin it again tomorrow.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Time is the measurer of all things, but is itself immeasurable, and the grand discloser of all things, but is itself undisclosed.
Charles Caleb Colton
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The avarice of the miser may be termed the grand sepulchral of all his other passions, as they successively decay.
Charles Caleb Colton
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He [the miser] falls down and worships the god of this world, but will have neither its pomps, its vanities nor its pleasures for his trouble.
Charles Caleb Colton
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He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place.
Charles Caleb Colton
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Patience is the support of weakness impatience the ruin of strength.
Charles Caleb Colton
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He that studies only men will get the body of knowledge without the soul and he that studies only books, the soul without the body.
Charles Caleb Colton