Charles Caleb Colton

Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832) was an English cleric, writer, collector, and aphorist best known for the book Lacon, or Many Things in Few Words. His life was restless and unconventional: he served as a clergyman, traveled widely, collected art, gambled, and eventually died by suicide in France. Colton matters because his reputation rests on the compact force of his maxims rather than on a large literary system. Lacon gathered observations on friendship, religion, time, truth, adversity, greatness, and human inconsistency in a style designed for quotation. Some of his lines entered common speech, including the famous remark about imitation as the sincerest form of flattery. His quotes endure because they are polished, skeptical, and worldly, often exposing the distance between what people profess and what they actually live. His maxims still compress worldly disappointment into language that travels well.

Common Themes