(United Kingdom, 1780-1832) In the preface to his Lacon: or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those Who Think, Colton wrote, "That writer does the most, who gives his reader the most knowledge, and takes from him the least time." The book, published in 1820, is a generous sampling of Colton's wit and wisdom; it is several hundred pages in length, but reading it makes you completely forget the clock. Colton described his age as one in which "free thinking [consists] not in thinking freely, but in being free from thinking." He was a famously free thinker himself. Educated at Eton and at King's College, Cambridge, he was appointed vicar of Kew, just outside London, in 1812. He was known as an eloquent preacher; that is, when he cared to apply himself to his sermons. At times, he was brilliant and moving. At other times—such as the occasion when he rushed through his talk and leapt from the pulpit with a rifle in each hand because he was late for a hunting expedition—he just went through the motions. He was notorious for his eccentricities, a vicar who loved to hunt, to gamble, and to drink. He was among the earliest cigar smokers and is reported to have stashed a supply of stogies under the pulpit, where he believed the temperature kept them fresh. In 1828, Colton lost his appointment as vicar of Kew, no doubt for the clerical equivalent of dereliction of duty. At various times, his gambling losses reduced him to squalor. But he somehow always managed to maintain a stock of fine wines. One visitor to his rooms wrote, "The appearance of Mr. C. was at once striking and peculiar. There was an indefinable something in the general character of his features, which, without being prepossessing, fixed the attention of a stranger in no ordinary degree . . . The most exaggerated description of the garrets of the poets of fifty years ago would not libel Mr. Colton's apartment." In a drawer underneath his bed, though, Colton kept a cache of outstanding wines, carefully arranged in rows and cushioned in sawdust. At one point, Colton disappeared, believed murdered by one of his less savory gambling associates. In fact, the reverend had merely gone into hiding to avoid his creditors, first to America—where he traveled under an assumed name and little is known of his exploits—and finally to Paris. In France, Colton was a regular at the Palais Royal, where he started winning big at the gaming tables. He upgraded his accommodation accordingly, amassed a collection of valuable paintings, and indulged his passion for fine wines to the full. Lacon was a publishing phenomenon when it came out in 1820.Demand for the book was so high that Colton produced a second volume in 1822.But Colton's lifestyle is said to have brought n an illness that required surgery. Colton, terrified by the prospect of the procedure, blew out his brains instead. One commentator described Colton's suicide as forcing the former vicar to enter "unbidden the presence of Him of whose laws he was so conspicuous a teacher and violator." In his life and his books, however, Colton was true to his own words: "It is much safer to think what we say, than to say what we think; I have attempted both."
Essential Aphorisms
He that has never suffered adversity is but half acquainted with others, or with himself.
Constant success shows us but one side of the world. For, as it surrounds us with friends, who will tell us only our merits, so it silences those enemies from whom alone we can learn our defects.
The sun should not set upon our anger; neither should he rise upon our confidence. We should forgive freely, but forget rarely. I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself.
He that likes a hot dinner, a warm welcome, new ideas and old wine will not often dine with the great.
There are some men whose enemies are to be pitied much and their friends more.
An act, by which we make one friend and one enemy, is a losing game, because revenge is a much stronger principle than gratitude.
Men spend their lives in anticipations, in determining to be vastly happy at some period or other when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other: it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future have not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age!
It is only when the rich are sick that they fully feel the impotence of wealth.
Those who have resources within themselves, who can dare to live alone, want friends the least, but, at the same time, best know how to prize them the most. But no company is far preferable to bad, because we are more apt to catch the vices of others rather than their virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.
An upright minister asks, what recommends a man; a corrupt minister asks, who.
For one man who sincerely pities our misfortunes, there are a thousand who sincerely hate our successes.
If you are under obligations to many, it is prudent to postpone the recompensing of one until it be in your power to remunerate all;otherwise you will make more enemies by what you give than by what you withhold.
The two most precious things on this side of the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one and the weakest weapon of the other. A wise man, therefore, will be the more anxious to deserve a fair name than to possess it, and this will teach so to live as not to be afraid to die.
Pedantry crams our heads with learned lumber and takes out our brains to make room for it.
Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it; anything but live for it.
No roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.
GEARY'S GUIDE TO THE WORLD'S GREAT APHORISTS
JAMES GEARY
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