If you haven’t heard of it, here it is: “That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.”
It’s from Charles Caleb Colton’s Lacon: or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those Who Think, published in 1820.
Colton was an odd duck: a vicar who ran up gambling debts, who won a fortune in France when he was winning but who had to disappear to America for a couple of years when he wasn’t. An odd man, but a sound principle.
It reminds me of Thoreau’s famous Theory of Cost, that the cost of a thing is how much of your life you have to give up laboring to get it.
Scholars who have to read eight hours to get to a bit of useful knowledge might well think they’ve paid too much.
Another similar idea: When Twitter arrived, Umberto Eco remarked that the new technology showed it was possible to ramble in 140 characters.
• Source: James Geary, Geary’s Guide to the World’s Great Aphorists; New York: Bloomsbury, 2007.
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