Be very slow to believe that you are wiser than all others; it is a fatal but common error. Charles Caleb Colton More Quotes by Charles Caleb Colton More Quotes From Charles Caleb Colton If you want enemies, excel others; if you want friends, let others excel you. Charles Caleb Colton ifs want enemy When we are in the company of sensible men, we ought to be doubly cautious of talking too much, lest we lose two good things, their good opinion and our own improvement; for what we have to say we know, but what they have to say we know not. Charles Caleb Colton talking men two It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat. Charles Caleb Colton coats every-man men He that sympathizes in all the happiness of others, perhaps himself enjoys the safest happiness. Charles Caleb Colton enjoy In all countries where nature does the most, man does the least. Charles Caleb Colton climate men country We should choose our books as we would our companions, for their sterling and intrinsic merit. Charles Caleb Colton merit lovers book Men are more readily contented with no intellectual light than with a little; and wherever they have been taught to acquire some knowledge in order to please others, they have most generally gone on to acquire more, to please themselves. Charles Caleb Colton light men knowledge Mathematicians have sought knowledge in figures, Philosophers in systems, Logicians in subtleties, and Metaphysicians in sounds. It is not in any nor in all of these. 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 men book knowledge The further we advance in knowledge, the more simplicity shall we discover in those primary rules that regulate all the apparently endless, complicated, and multiform operations of the Godhead. Charles Caleb Colton simplicity complicated knowledge Bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret. Charles Caleb Colton regret insomnia sleep Those that will not permit their wealth to do any good for others. . . cut themselves off from the truest pleasure here and the highest happiness later. Charles Caleb Colton wealth cutting giving 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 envy heart people Others, again, give us the mere carcass of another man’s thoughts, but deprived of all their life and spirit, and this is to add murder to robbery. I have somewhere seen it observed, that we should make the same use of a book, as a bee does of a flower; she steals sweets from it, but does not injure it; and those sweets she herself improves and concocts into honey. But most plagiarists, like the drone, have neither taste to select, nor industry to acquire, nor skill to improve, but impudently pilfer the honey ready prepared from the hive. Charles Caleb Colton flower sweet book Genius, in one respect, is like gold; numbers of persons are constantly writing about both, who have neither. Charles Caleb Colton gold writing numbers It is not until we have passed through the furnace that we are made to know how much dross there is in our composition. Charles Caleb Colton dross gratitude made Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment. Charles Caleb Colton punishment vices heart 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 gratitude circles fire The benevolent have the advantage of the envious, even in this present life; for the envious man is tormented not only by all the ill that befalls himself, but by all the good that happens to another; whereas the benevolent man is the better prepared to bear his own calamities unruffled, from the complacency and serenity he has secured from contemplating the prosperity of all around him. Charles Caleb Colton serenity gratitude men It is a common observation that any fool can get money; but they are not wise that think so. Charles Caleb Colton money wise thinking Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity than straigthforward and simple integrity in another. A knave would rather quarrel with a brother knave than with a fool, but he would rather avoid a quarrel with one honest man than with both. He can combat a fool by management and address, and he can conquer a knave by temptations. But the honest man is neither to be bamboozled nor bribed. Charles Caleb Colton brother simple integrity
