"It is better to meet danger than to wait for it. He that is on a lee shore, and foresees a hurricane, stands out to sea and encounters a storm to avoid a shipwreck"
About this Quote
Colton sells courage the way a seasoned mariner sells weather sense: not as bravado, but as risk management. The line pivots on an unsentimental premise that feels almost modern in its pragmatism: danger is inevitable; what matters is whether you choose the terms. “Meet” versus “wait” isn’t just action versus passivity. It’s agency versus captivity, the difference between steering into rough water and being pinned against the rocks by someone else’s timeline.
The “lee shore” image does the heavy lifting. In nautical life, a lee shore is where the wind conspires with geography to kill you; it’s the place you drift toward when you’ve run out of options. Colton’s subtext is that hesitation is not neutral. Waiting doesn’t preserve safety, it quietly spends it. By contrast, “standing out to sea” sounds counterintuitive - you sail toward the storm - but it’s the only move that restores room to maneuver. The metaphor flatters decisiveness without romanticizing it: you don’t seek the hurricane; you accept smaller, navigable peril to avoid catastrophic inevitability.
Context matters: Colton wrote in an early 19th-century Britain thick with maritime consciousness and moral aphorisms, a culture where “character” was often defined as composure under pressure. His intent is didactic, but the rhetoric works because it’s concrete. He doesn’t preach “be brave.” He hands you a scenario where fear and wisdom look deceptively similar, then dares you to tell them apart.
The “lee shore” image does the heavy lifting. In nautical life, a lee shore is where the wind conspires with geography to kill you; it’s the place you drift toward when you’ve run out of options. Colton’s subtext is that hesitation is not neutral. Waiting doesn’t preserve safety, it quietly spends it. By contrast, “standing out to sea” sounds counterintuitive - you sail toward the storm - but it’s the only move that restores room to maneuver. The metaphor flatters decisiveness without romanticizing it: you don’t seek the hurricane; you accept smaller, navigable peril to avoid catastrophic inevitability.
Context matters: Colton wrote in an early 19th-century Britain thick with maritime consciousness and moral aphorisms, a culture where “character” was often defined as composure under pressure. His intent is didactic, but the rhetoric works because it’s concrete. He doesn’t preach “be brave.” He hands you a scenario where fear and wisdom look deceptively similar, then dares you to tell them apart.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|---|
| Source | Lacon; or, Many Things in Few Words — aphorism attributed to Charles Caleb Colton (appears in Colton quote compilations and cited from "Lacon"). |
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