Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

Gentlemen cherish worth; the vulgar cherish dirt. Gentlemen trust in justice; the vulgar trust in favor.

Who touches money touches dirt; and the less religion has to do with it, the better.

People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there. You can let your conscience alone if you're nice to the second housemaid.

What counts is what you do with your money, not where it came from.

An English merchant is a new species of gentleman.

A rich man is an honest man--no thanks to him; for he would be a double knave, to cheat mankind when he had no need of it: he has no occasion to press upon his integrity, nor so much as to touch upon the borders of dishonesty.

If I may venture to be frank I would say about myself that I was every inch a gentleman.

You see, among men who are honored with the common appellation ogentleman, many contradictions to that character.

I'll do business with anyone, but I'll only go sailing with gentlemen.

Irony is to the high-bred what billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one gentleman thinks another gentleman an ass, he does not say it point-blank, he implies it in the politest terms he can invent.

We must be gentle now we are gentlemen.

You may depend upon it, religion is, in its essence, the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It will alone gentilize, if unmixed with cant; and I know nothing else that will, alone. Certainly not the army, which is thought to be the grand embellisher of manners.

The man enslaved to wealth can never be honest.

The genteel thing is the genteel thing any time, if as be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly.

It should seem that indolence itself would incline a person to be honest, as it requires infinitely greater pains and contrivance to be a knave.

Those who seek to impress upon us that they are gentlemen will usually be found mistaken.

Hardly ever can a youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no matter how much money there be in his pocket, can he ever learn to dress like a gentleman-born. The merchants offer their wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest swell, but he simply cannot buy the right things.

Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.

A gentleman, is a rarer thing than some of us think for. Which of us can point out many such in his circle--men whose aims are generous, whose truth is constant and elevated; who can look the world honestly in the face, with an equal manly sympathy for the great and the small? We all know a hundred whose coats are well made, and a score who have excellent manners; but of gentlemen how many? Let us take a little scrap of paper, and each make out his list.

You’re a gentleman,” they used to say to him. “You shouldn’t have gone murdering people with a hatchet; that’s no occupation for a gentleman.

Writing, madam, is a mechanic part of wit. A gentleman should never go beyond a song or a billet.

Perhaps propriety is as near a word as any to denote the manners of the gentleman; elegance is necessary to the fine gentleman; dignity is proper to noblemen; and majesty to kings.

The dog is a peasant and the cat is a gentleman.

Industry and frugality, as the means of procuring wealth . . . thereby [secures] virtue, it being more difficult for a man in want to act always honestly. . . .