True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.

Charles Caleb Colton (1780–1832), an English cleric-turned-writer, is best known for his aphoristic collection *Lacon; or, Many Things in Few Words*. The remark about friendship and health fits the book’s moralizing, worldly tone: compact observations meant for quotation and reflection rather than a single narrative setting. Colton wrote during a period when maxims and “sentences” circulated widely in periodicals and commonplace books, and *Lacon* was designed to supply such portable wisdom. The line reflects a common early-19th-century preoccupation with prudence and the belated recognition of life’s real goods—often only after they have disappeared.

The aphorism equates friendship with health to stress its quiet, background nature: when it is present, it does not clamor for attention, and so people underestimate it. Only its absence—through estrangement, betrayal, distance, or death—reveals how much stability, joy, and resilience it provided. The comparison also implies that friendship, like health, is partly maintained by ongoing care rather than occasional grand gestures. Colton’s point is less sentimental than admonitory: value friends while you have them, and do not postpone gratitude or attentiveness until loss makes appreciation unavoidable.