Charles Caleb Colton Thinking Quotations

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

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.

It is a common observation that any fool can get money; but they are not wise that think so.

None of us are so much praised or censured as we think.

Those that know the least of others think the highest of themselves.

He that thinks he is the happiest man, really is so. But he that thinks he is the wisest, is generally the greatest fool.

Men of strong minds and who think for themselves, should not be discouraged on finding occasionally that some of their best ideas have been anticipated by former writers; they will neither anathematize others nor despair themselves. They will rather go on discovering things before discovered, until they are rewarded with a land hitherto unknown, an empire indisputably their own, both right of conquest and of discovery.

It is with nations as with individuals, those who know the least of others think the highest of themselves; for the whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other.

There are two things which ought to teach us to think but meanly of human glory; the very best have had their calumniators, the very worst their panegyrists.

He that openly tells, his friends all that he thinks of them, must expect that they will secretly tell his enemies much that they do not think of him.

Honesty is not only the deepest policy, but the highest wisdom; since, however difficult it may be for integrity to get on, it is a thousand times more difficult for knavery to get off; and no error is more fatal than that of those who think that Virtue has no other reward because they have heard that she is her own.

A thorough-paced antiquary not only remembers what all other people have thought proper to forget, but he also forgets what all other people think is proper to remember.

There are some who write, talk, and think, so much about vice and virtue, that they have no time to practice either the one or the other.

We are ruined, not by what we really want, but by what we think we do; therefore never go abroad in search of your wants; if they be real wants, they will come home in search of you; for he that buys what he does not want, will soon want what he cannot buy.

Those who have finished by making all others think with them, have usually been those who began by daring to think with themselves.

If it be true that men of strong imaginations are usually dogmatists--and I am inclined to think it is so--it ought to follow that men of weak imaginations are the reverse; in which case we should have some compensation for stupidity. But it unfortunately happens that no dogmatist is more obstinate or less open to conviction than a fool.

In pulpit eloquence, the grand difficulty lies here--to give the subject all the dignity it so fully deserves, without attaching any importance to ourselves. The Christian messenger cannot think too highly of his prince, nor too humbly of himself.