A man is not clever simply because he has many ideas, just as he is not necessarily a good general because he has many soldiers.
A poetaster asked Chamfort’s opinion on a couplet. “Excellent,” he said, “were it not for its length.”
Some one has said that to plagiarise from the ancients is to play the pirate beyond the Equator, but that to steal from the moderns is to pick pockets at street corners.
An interesting work might be compiled which would point out all the noxious ideas concerning the human spirit, society and morality, to be found argued or implicit in the most celebrated writings and the most highly revered authors; ideas which propagate religious superstition, evil political principles, despotism, class pride and popular prejudices of every kind. Such a work would demonstrate that nearly all books corrupt, and that the best do almost as much harm as good.
There are two classes of moralists and political writers; those who have only seen human nature on its detestable or absurd side, and they form the greater number: Lucian, Montaigne, Labruyère, Larochefoucauld, Swift, Mandeville, Helvetius, &c.; those who have only seen it on its finer side and in its perfection like Shaftesbury and some others. The first know nothing of the palace, the pig-sties of which are all that they have seen; the second are enthusiasts, who turn their eyes far from all that offends them, but that, none the less, exists. Est in medio verum.