Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

Vice has more martyrs than virtue; and it often happens that men suffer more to be lost than to be saved.

Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.

God save us from people who do the morally right thing. It's always the rest of us who get broken in half.

Sometimes virtue starves while vice is fed.

Power makes gods. Virtue makes martyrs.

I never was so rapid in my virtue but my vice kept up with me.

One principal characteristic of vice in the present age is the contempt of fame.

Vice deceives us when dressed in the garb of virtue.

Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.

Women who are the least bashful are not unfrequently the most modest; and we are never more deceived than when we would infer any laxity of principle from that freedom of demeanor which often arises from a total ignorance of vice.

No one is born without vices, and he is the best man who is encumbered with the least.

To preach of peace and brotherhood, oh what might be the cost? A man he did it long ago, and they hung him on a cross.

Virtue steals, like a guilty thing, into the secret haunts of vice and infamy, clings to their devoted victim, and will not be driven quite away. Nothing can destroy the human heart.

Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.

Goodness is equally hateful to the wicked, as vice is to the virtuous.

Most men are more willing to indulge in easy vices than to practise laborious virtues.

Virtue may not always make a Face handsome, but Vice will certainly make it ugly.

How sternly we reproach virtue for its failings, how indulgent we are to the better qualities of vice!

Though the wisdom or virtue of one can very rarely make many happy, the folly or vice of one man often make many miserable.

Cowardice is the most terrible of vices.

Living in the modern age, death for virtue is the wage. So it seems in darker hours. Evil wins, kindness cowers. Ruled by violence and vice we all stand upon thin ice. Are we brave or are we mice, here upon such thin, thin ice? Dare we linger, dare we skate? Dare we laugh or celebrate, knowing we may strain the ice? Preserve the ice at any price?

It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues.

I have known persons without a friend--never any one without some virtue. The virtues of the former conspired with their vices to make the whole world their enemies.

The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be. Try to make people moral, and you lay the groundwork for vice.

A martyr's disciples suffer more than the martyr.