“Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.”

— Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon (1820), Vol. I; CCCXXII

About Charles Caleb Colton

1780 – 1832

English cleric and writer, author of "Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words".

“Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the dinner.”

“The wisest man may be wiser to-day than he was yesterday, and to-morrow than he is to-day.”

“That writer does the most, who gives his reader the most knowledge, and takes from him the least time.”

“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces.”

“Always take the short cut; and that is the rational one. Therefore say and do everything according to soundest reason.”

“The young have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations.”

“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.”

“I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research.”

“There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them.”