Charles Caleb Colton

He that has never suffered extreme adversity knows not the full extent of his own depravation.

Eloquence is the language of nature and cannot be learned in the schools but rhetoric is the creature of art which he who feels least will most excel in.

A windmill is eternally at work to accomplish one end although it shifts with every variation of the weather cock and assumes 10 different positions in a day.

Wealth ... is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much but wants more.

Pure truth like pure gold has been found unfit for circulation because men have discovered that it is far more convenient to adulterate the truth than to refine themselves.

Men spend their lives in anticipation 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.... 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.

A house may draw visitors but it is the possessor alone that can detain them.

If you would be known and not know vegetate in a village if you would know and not be known live in a city.

Success seems to be that which forms the distinction between confidence and conceit.

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.

Happiness that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life impels us through all its mazes and meanderings but leads none of us by the same route.

We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves it is civil war.

The three great apostles of practical atheism that make converts without persecuting and retain them without preaching are Wealth Health and Power.

Men will wrangle for religion write for it fight for it die for it anything but live for it.

We hate some persons because we do not know them and will not know them because we hate them.

There is a paradox in pride: it makes some men ridiculous but prevents others from becoming so.

Times of general calamity and confusion have ever been productive of the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storms.

It is good to act as if. It is even better to grow to the point where it is no longer an act.