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

Mystery is not profoundness.
Charles Caleb Colton

Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books.
Charles Caleb Colton

No company is preferable to bad. We are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.
Charles Caleb Colton

None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them.
Charles Caleb Colton

Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity, than straightforward and simple integrity in another.
Charles Caleb Colton

Nothing so completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straightforward and simple integrity in another.
Charles Caleb Colton

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.
Charles Caleb Colton

Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.
Charles Caleb Colton

Our income are like our shoes; if too small, they gall and pinch us; but if too large, they cause us to stumble and trip.
Charles Caleb Colton

Patience is the support of weakness; impatience the ruin of strength.
Charles Caleb Colton

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

Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness when bequeathed by those who, even alive, would part with nothing.
Charles Caleb Colton

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.
Charles Caleb Colton

Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish.
Charles Caleb Colton

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

That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.
Charles Caleb Colton

The consequences of things are not always proportionate to the apparent magnitude of those events that have produced them. Thus the American Revolution, from which little was expected, produced much; but the French Revolution, from which much was expected, produced little.
Charles Caleb Colton

The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honored so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest in the end.
Charles Caleb Colton

The excess of our youth are checks written against our age and they are payable with interest thirty years later.
Charles Caleb Colton