Charles Caleb Colton Love Quotes & Sayings

We strive as hard to hide our hearts from ourselves as from others, and always with more success; for in deciding upon our own case we are both judge, jury, and executioner, and where sophistry cannot overcome the first, or flattery the second, self-love is always ready to defeat the sentence by bribing the third. — Charles Caleb Colton

The most notorious swindler has not assumed so many names as self-love, nor is so much ashamed of his own. She calls herself patriotism, when at the same time she is rejoicing at just as much calamity to her native country as will introduce herself into power, and expel her rivals. — Charles Caleb Colton

Few things are more agreeable to self-love than revenge, and yet no cause so effectually restrains us from revenge as self-love. And this paradox naturally suggests another; that the strength of the community is not unfrequently built upon the weakness of those individuals that compose it. — Charles Caleb Colton

Some philosophers would give a sex to revenge, and appropriate it almost exclusively to the female mind. But, like most other vices, it is of both genders; yet, because wounded vanity and slighted love are the two most powerful excitements to revenge, it has been thought, perhaps, to rage with more violence in the female heart. — Charles Caleb Colton

Love is a volcano, the crater of which no wise man will approach too nearly, lest ... he should be swallowed up. — Charles Caleb Colton

Love may exist without jealousy, although this is rare: but jealousy may exist without love, and this is common; for jealousy can feed on that which is bitter no less than on that which is sweet, and is sustained by pride as often as by affection. — Charles Caleb Colton

Women generally consider consequences in love, seldom in resentment. — Charles Caleb Colton

Love, like the cold bath, is never negative, it seldom leaves us where it finds us; if once we plunge into it, it will either heighten our virtues, or inflame our vices. — Charles Caleb Colton

If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself ~ all that runs over will be yours. — Charles Caleb Colton

Most men know what they hate; few what they love — Charles Caleb Colton

The plainest man that can convince a woman that he is really in love with her has done more to make her in love with him than the handsomest man, if he can produce no such conviction. For the love of woman is a shoot, not a seed, and flourishes most vigorously only when ingrafted on that love which is rooted in the breast of another. — Charles Caleb Colton

That cowardice is incorrigible which the love of power cannot overcome. — Charles Caleb Colton

A town, before it can be plundered and, deserted, must first be taken; and in this particular Venus has borrowed a law from her consort Mars. A woman that wishes to retain her suitor must keep him in the trenches; for this is a siege which the besieger never raises for want of supplies, since a feast is more fatal to love than a fast, and a surfeit than a starvation. Inanition may cause it to die a slow death, but repletion always destroys it by a sudden one. — Charles Caleb Colton

Love is an alliance of friendship and animalism; if the former predominates it is passion exalted and refined; if the latter, gross and sensual. — Charles Caleb Colton

To cure us of our immoderate love of gain, we should seriously consider how many goods there are that money will not purchase, and these the best; and how many evils there are that money will not remedy, and these the worst. — Charles Caleb Colton

Self-love, in a well-regulated breast, is as the steward of the household, superintending the expenditure, and seeing that benevolence herself should be prudential, in order to be permanent, by providing that the reservoir which feeds should also be fed. — Charles Caleb Colton

Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride. — Charles Caleb Colton

Self-denial is often the sacrifice of one sort of self-love for another. — Charles Caleb Colton

Heroism, self-denial, and magnanimity, in all instances where they do not spring from a principle of religion, are but splendid altars on which we sacrifice one kind of self-love to another. — Charles Caleb Colton

Friendship often ends in love. But love in friendship; never. — Charles Caleb Colton

As that gallant can best affect a pretended passion for one woman who has no true love for another, so he that has no real esteem for any of the virtues can best assume the appearance of them all. — Charles Caleb Colton

We are more inclined to hate one another for points on which we differ, than to love one another for points on which we agree. The reason perhaps is this: when we find others that agree with us, we seldom trouble ourselves to confirm that agreement; but when we chance on those who differ from us, we are zealous both to convince and to convert them. Our pride is hurt by the failure, and disappointed pride engenders hatred. — Charles Caleb Colton

Vanity finds in self-love so powerful an ally that it storms, as it were, by a coup de main,, the citadel of our heads, where, having blinded the two watchmen, it readily descends into the heart. — Charles Caleb Colton

Love is an alchemist that can transmute poison into food
and a spaniel, that prefers even punishment from one hand to caresses from another. But it is in love as in war, we are often more indebted for our success to the weakness of the defence than to the energy of the attack; for mere idleness has ruined more women than passion; vanity more than idleness, and credulity more than either. — Charles Caleb Colton

He that abuses his own profession will not patiently bear with any one else who does so. And this is one of our most subtle operations of self-love. For when we abuse our own profession, we tacitly except ourselves; but when another abuses it, we are far from being certain that this is the case. — Charles Caleb Colton

There is a holy love and a holy rage, and our best virtues never glow so brightly as when our passions are excited in the cause. Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues; and the best of us are better when roused. — Charles Caleb Colton