The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.

Charles Caleb Colton (1780–1832), an English cleric-turned-writer, is best known for his aphoristic collection *Lacon; or, Many Things in Few Words* (first published 1820–1822). The “bed” paradox belongs to Colton’s characteristic mode: compact, witty moral observation drawn from everyday life rather than formal philosophy. Written in the early 19th century—an era fond of maxims, conduct literature, and satirical reflections on human inconsistency—the remark uses domestic routine as a miniature case study in self-contradiction. Colton’s aphorisms often juxtapose intention and behavior, and this one turns a universal experience (dreading bedtime yet resisting rising) into a polished epigram.

The line humorously exposes the gap between what we decide and what we do. “We go to it with reluctance” points to the mind’s resistance to ending the day—unfinished tasks, pleasures, or anxieties—while “we quit it with regret” captures the body’s desire to prolong comfort and avoid effort. The pivot—“make up our minds” versus “make up our bodies”—turns a familiar phrase (“make up the bed”) into a metaphor for competing authorities within the self: rational plans at night versus physical inertia in the morning. Beyond sleep, the aphorism comments on human weakness of will and the cyclical nature of resolutions that collapse when confronted with sensation, habit, and immediate comfort.