"He that gives a portion of his time and talent to the investigation of mathematical truth will come to all other questions with a decided advantage over his opponents." (Charles C Colton, "Lacon", 1820)
"In science, reason is the guide; in poetry, taste. The object of the one is truth, which is uniform and indivisible; the object of the other is beauty, which is multiform and varied." (Charles C Colton, "Lacon", 1820)
"It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge. Mal-information is more hopeless than non-information; for error is always more busy than ignorance. Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase. Ignorance is contented to stand still with her back to the truth; but error is more presumptuous, and proceeds in the same direction. Ignorance has no light, but error follows a false one. The consequence is, that error, when she retraces her footsteps, has further to go, before she can arrive at the truth, than ignorance." (Charles C Colton, "Lacon", 1820)
"Mathematicians have sought knowledge in figures, Philosophers in systems, Logicians in subtleties, and Metaphysicians in sounds. It is not in any nor in all of these. He that studies only men, will get the body of knowledge without the soul, and he that studies only books, the soul without the body." (Charles C Colton, "Lacon: Many Things in Few Words", 1820)
"Metaphor [...] may be said to be the algebra of language." (Charles C Colton, "Lacon: Many Things in Few Words", 1820)
"The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth; all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing." (Charles C Colton, "Lacon: Many Things in Few Words", 1820)
"The science of the mathematics performs more than it promises, but the science of metaphysics promises more than it performs. The study of the mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence; but the study of metaphysics begins with a torrent of tropes, and a copious current of words, yet loses itself at last in obscurity and conjecture, like the Niger in his barren deserts of sand." (Charles C Colton, "Lacon: Many Things in Few Words", 1820)
"There are two things cheap and common enough when separated, but as costly in value, as irresistible in power, when combined - truth and novelty. Their union is like that of steam and of fire, which nothing can overcome. Truth and novelty, when united, must overthrow the whole superincumbent pressure of error and of prejudice, whatever be its weight; and the effects will be proportionate to the resistance. But the moral earthquake, unlike the natural, while it convulses the nations, reforms them too." (Charles C Colton, "Lacon: Many Things in Few Words", 1820)
"We [...] are profiting not only by the knowledge, but also by the ignorance, not only by the discoveries, but also by the errors of our forefathers; for the march of science, like that of time, has been progressing in the darkness, no less than in the light." (Charles C Colton, "Lacon: Many Things in Few Words", 1820)
"Logic and metaphysics make use of more tools than all the rest of the sciences put together, and do the least work." (Charles C Colton, "Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan" 1823)
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