“It is always safe to learn, even from our enemies, seldom safe to venture to instruct, even our friends.”

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

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.”

“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.”

“Give thyself time to learn something new and good, and cease to be whirled around.”

“For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing.”

“While both are dear, piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.”

“The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.”

“But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!”