Frank Moore Colby quotes

Frank Moore Colby was an American educator, historian, and writer, noted for his contributions to encyclopedias and periodicals. His sharp wit and insightful commentary gained him respect in literary and academic circles. He influenced American intellectual life through his writing and teaching. Here are 22 of his quotes:

Men will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig. How many of them will own up to a lack of humor?

Frank Moore Colby

Cast your cares on God; that anchor holds.

Frank Moore Colby

Many people lose their tempers merely from seeing you keep yours.

Frank Moore Colby

Every man ought to be inquisitive through every hour of his great adventure down to the day when he shall no longer cast a shadow in the sun. For if he dies without a question in his heart, what excuse is there for his continuance?

Frank Moore Colby

I know of no more disagreeable situation than to be left feeling generally angry without anybody in particular to be angry at.

Frank Moore Colby

Persecution was at least a sign of personal interest. Tolerance is composed of nine parts of apathy to one of brotherly love.

Frank Moore Colby

I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the bottom simply by looking at the men at the top.

Frank Moore Colby

Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a life is to go on asking them.

Frank Moore Colby

That is the consolation of a little mind; you have the fun of changing it without impeding the progress of mankind.

Frank Moore Colby

Politics is a place of humble hopes and strangely modest requirements, where all are good who are not criminal and all are wise who are not ridiculously otherwise.

Frank Moore Colby

The New York playgoer is a child of nature, and he has an honest and wholesome regard of whatever is atrocious in art.

Frank Moore Colby

We always carry out by committee anything in which any one of us alone would be too reasonable to persist.

Frank Moore Colby

Talk ought always to run obliquely, not nose to nose with no chance of mental escape.

Frank Moore Colby

One learns little more about a man from the feats of his literary memory than from the feats of his alimentary canal.

Frank Moore Colby

If a large city can, after intense intellectual efforts, choose for its mayor a man who merely will not steal from it, we consider it a triumph of the suffrage.

Frank Moore Colby

Averageness is a quality we must put up with. Men march toward civilization in column formation, and by the time the van has learned to admire the masters the rear is drawing reluctantly away from the totem pole.

Frank Moore Colby

By rights, satire is a lonely and introspective occupation, for nobody can describe a fool to the life without much patient self-inspection.

Frank Moore Colby

Sin in this country has been always said to be rather calculating than impulsive.

Frank Moore Colby

A 'new thinker', when studied closely, is merely a man who does not know what other people have thought.

Frank Moore Colby