Charles Caleb Colton

“Constant success shows us but one side of the world; adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.”

“Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power.”

“There are three modes of bearing the ills of life, by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion.”

“To write what is worth publishing, to find honest people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it, are the three great difficulties in being an author.”

“Of present fame think little, and of future less; the praises that we receive after we are buried, like the flowers that are strewed over our grave, may be gratifying to the living, but they are nothing to the dead.”

“Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.”

“The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.”

“We own almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed but to those who have differed.”

“Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.”

“There are some frauds so well conducted that it would be stupidity not to be deceived by them.”

“There are three difficulties in authorship: to write anything worth publishing, to find honest men to publish it, and to find sensible men to read it.”

“Men spend their lives in anticipations,—in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other—it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future have not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.”

“If a horse has four legs, and I'm riding it, I think I can win.”

“The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility.”

“The present time has one advantage over every other - it is our own.”

“Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride.”

“I'm aiming by the time I'm fifty to stop being an adolescent.”

“Our incomes should be like our shoes; if too small, they will gall and pinch us; but if too large, they will cause us to stumble and to trip.”

“That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.”

“Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console.”