Charles Caleb Colton

The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.

There are three modes of bearing the ills of life, by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion.

Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.

Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.

Did universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and hell a fable.

He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place.

Justice to my readers compels me to admit that I write because I have nothing to do; justice to myself induces me to add that I will cease to write the moment I have nothing to say.

Constant success shows us but one side of the world; adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.

Patience is the support of weakness; impatience the ruin of strength.

The firmest of friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame.

There are three difficulties in authorship: to write anything worth publishing, to find honest men to publish it, and to find sensible men to read it.

Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.