Charles Caleb Colton

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

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.

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.

To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread.

There is this difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man, really is so but he that thinks himself the wisest, is generally the greatest fool.

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

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.

Friendship, of itself a holy tie, is made more sacred by adversity.

True friendship is like sound health the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.

Friendship often ends in love but love in friendship - never.

We often pretend to fear what we really despise, and more often despise what we really fear.

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.

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.

Those who visit foreign nations, but associate only with their own country-men, change their climate, but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with traveled bodies, but untravelled minds.

Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.

There are two way of establishing a reputation, one to be praised by honest people and the other to be accused by rogues. It is best, however, to secure the first one, because it will always be accompanied by the latter.

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

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.

He who studies books alone will know how things ought to be, and he who studies men will know how they are.

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.