Charles Caleb Colton: Quotes about men

Charles Caleb Colton was British priest and writer. Explore interesting quotes on men.
Charles Caleb Colton: 76 quotes6 likes

“Those illustrious men, who, like torches, have consumed themselves, in order to enlighten others, have often lived unrewarded, and died unlamented. But the tongues of aftertimes have done them justice in one sense, but injustice in another. They have honoured them with their praise, but they have disgraced them with their pity. They pity them forsooth, because they missed of present praise, and temporal emolument; things great indeed to the little, but little to the great.”

Charles Caleb Colton

Vol. I; DLXXV
Lacon (1820)

“Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it; anything but live for it.”

Charles Caleb Colton

Vol. I; XXV
Lacon (1820)
Variant: Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it; anything but live for it.

“This tendency, however, to ascribe an universality of genius to great men, led Dryden to affirm, on the strength of two smart satyrical lines, that Virgil could have written a satire equal to Juvenal. But, with all due deference to Dryden, I conceive it much more manifest, that Juvenal could have written a better epic than Virgil, than that Virgil could have written a satire equal to Juvenal. Juvenal has many passages of the moral sublime far superior to any that can be found in Virgil, who, indeed, seldom attempts a higher flight than the sublime of description. Had Lucan lived, he might have rivalled them both, as he has all the vigour of the one, and time might have furnished him with the taste and elegance of the other.”

Charles Caleb Colton

Vol. I; CCCCXII
Lacon (1820)