Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

I'm not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman. I'm living on.

I sincerely believe that no problem is bigger than man, and problems are blown out of proportion by man himself.

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn't. A sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.

What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

The Bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.

Comedy is the difference between how you see a person and how they see themselves.

I've had to accept that - that everyone cannot love me. Because when there's love, there's hate. When there's light, there's dark. But it was really hard to accept as an artist that there's a lot of people that hate me, but on the other side, there are many more people who love me. I think everyone goes through that.

It's when I compare myself to what other people are able to do that I run into trouble. It is a bummer. I just constantly try to put things into perspective.

Thou seest I have more flesh than another man, and therefore more frailty.

My strengths make me contemptuous. My weaknesses make me charitable.

each of us only feels the torn lining of his own coat and sees the wholeness of the other person's.

We make a goddess of Fortune ... and place her in the highest heaven. But it is not fortune that is exalted and powerful, but we ourselves that are abject and weak.

Man cannot bear his own portrait. The image of his limits and his own determinacy exasperates him, drives him mad.

I consider how little man is, yet, in his own mind, how great. He is lord and master of all things, yet scarce can command anything.

(As human beings) We see everything everything in a glass, darkly. Sometimes we can peer through the glass and catch a glimpse of what is on the other side. If we were to polish the glass clean, we'd see much more. But then we would no longer see ourselves.

When I say: "I'm looking at you, I can see you", that means: "I can see you because I can't see what is behind you: I see you through the frame I am drawing. I can't see inside you". If I could see you from beneath or from behind, I would be God. I can see you because my back and my sides are blind. One can't even imagine what it would be like to see inside people.

It is a sign of weakness to avoid showing signs of weakness.

My sense of humor will always stand in the way of my seeing myself, my family, my race or my nation as the whole intent of the universe.

Do you know the primary difference between men and gods? ... Gods don’t think they can become men

I have been trying to make the reader believe that we actually are, at present, creatures whose character must be, in some respects, a horror to God, as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves. This I believe to be a fact: and I notice that the holier a man is, the more fully he is aware of that fact.

Forever I shall be a stranger to myself. In psychology as in logic, there are truths but no truth.

People cain't help being what they are any more than a skunk can help being a skunk. Don't you think if they had their choice they would rather be something else? Sure they would. People are just weak.

The recognition of human wretchedness is difficult for whoever is rich and powerful because he is almost invincibly led to believe that he is something. It is equally difficult for the man in miserable circumstances because he is almost invincibly led to believe that the rich and powerful man is something.

Laughter is a sense of proportion and a power of seeing yourself from the outside.

Fearfulness, contrary to all other vices, maketh a man think the better of another, the worse of himself.