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Authors & Writing
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"Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease."
-Charles Caleb Colton
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Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.
-Charles Caleb Colton
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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.
-Charles Caleb Colton
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Determination
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Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.
-Charles Caleb Colton
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Fashion
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"Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride."
-Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, 1825
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Hate
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We hate some persons because we do not know them, and will not know them because we hate them.
-Charles Caleb Colton
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Humility
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The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is humility.
-Charles Caleb Colton
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Logic
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Logic is a large drawer, containing some useful instruments, and many more that are superfluous. A wise man will look into it for two purposes, to avail himself of those instruments that are really useful, and to admire the ingenuity with which those that are not so, are assorted and arranged.
-Charles Caleb Colton
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Love
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"Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship - never."
-Charles Caleb Colton
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Morals
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There are two principles of established acceptance in morals; first, that self-interest is the mainspring of all of our actions, and secondly, that utility is the test of their value.
-Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, 1820
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Pride
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To know a man, observe how he wins his object, rather than how he loses it; for when we fail, our pride supports; when we succeed; it betrays us.
-Charles Caleb Colton
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Questions
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Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
-Charles Caleb Colton
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Sight
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Men are born with two eyes, but only one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.
-Charles Caleb Colton
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Solitude
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"To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet."
-Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, 1825
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Suicide
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Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live.
-Charles Caleb Colton, "The Lacon", 1829
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Time
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Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past even while we attempt to define it, and, like the flash of lightning, at once exists and expires.
-Charles Caleb Colton
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Women
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In America every woman has her set of girl-friends; some are cousins, the rest are gained at school. These form a permanent committee who sit on each other's affairs, who "come out" together, marry and divorce together, and who end as those groups of bustling, heartless well-informed club-women who govern society. Against them the Couple of Ehepaar is helpless and Man in their eyes but a biological interlude.
-Charles Caleb Colton
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Books by and about Charles Caleb Colton
