Geoffrey Madan (1895-1947) was an English aesthete of the first water. Although he fought and was wounded in the Great War, his main passions were quiet: wine, old silver, and books, especially books. Madan was an accomplished classicist – he procured a schoolwide holiday while at Eton for his account of the establishment written in Herodotean Greek. He published no books. He did compile a large collection of aphorisms, mostly in English but many in other languages. A selection of these were published in 1981 by Oxford under the title Geoffrey Madan’s Notebooks.

In one of the handful of entries Madan himself contributed to this chrestomathy, he described the collection as “an anthology of the forgotten sayings of great men, and the great sayings of forgotten men.” Item, from Benjamin Jowett: “Precautions are always blamed. When successful they are said to be unnecessary.” From Arthur Schopenhauer: “Treat a work of art like a prince: let it speak to you first.” (Good advice.)

Many of the entries have a certain bite.

Man at the Tuesday club: Anyway I’d rather be right than clever. O.T. Falk: I’d rather be both than neither.

Man at the Tuesday club: Anyway I’d rather be right than clever.

O.T. Falk: I’d rather be both than neither.

And how about this morçeau by E.F. Benson about Ronald........

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