Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together.

Charles Caleb Colton (1780–1832), an English cleric-turned-writer, is best known for his aphoristic collection *Lacon; or, Many Things in Few Words* (1820–1822). The remark about “Body and mind” fits Colton’s characteristic style: compact moral observation expressed through a domestic analogy. In the early nineteenth century, such epigrammatic reflections on character, mortality, and the tensions between reason and feeling were popular in British print culture. Colton’s own life—marked by financial trouble, self-exile, and a death by suicide in Paris—has often led readers to notice the darker edge beneath his polished maxims, especially when he writes about the uneven alignment of inner life and physical fate.

The aphorism suggests that the “body” and the “mind” can separate in their readiness for death: one may fail while the other remains active, or one may be exhausted while the other still clings to life. By comparing them to “man and wife,” Colton underscores both intimacy and friction—two partners bound together, yet not perfectly synchronized in desire or timing. The line captures a common human experience around illness and dying: mental clarity can persist amid bodily decline, or bodily survival can outlast a mind that has deteriorated. Its significance lies in resisting a neat, unified picture of the self; it portrays personhood as a partnership whose harmony is contingent rather than guaranteed.