Short Sayings of Great Men - With Historical and Explanatory Notes #245365

A Latin poet has asserted that there was no saying which had not been already said. In later times, Henry IV. Will be surprised to know that Agesilaus preceded him in that royal game of romps which both kings thought only a father could appreciate. The poet Rogers was not the first to pre fer the art of forgetting to that of memory and Talleyrand has reason to invoke the curse of Donatus, Perish the men who said our good things before us! No one better than Fournier, in his Esprit dans l'histoire, has plucked the stolen plumage from the claw. I cannot acknowledge my obligations to this iconoclast of bons mots without borrowing Madame du Deffand's judgment of Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois, — that his Wit in History should be called Wit on History.