A curiosité n'est que la vanité. Le plus souvent on ne veut savoir que pour en parler.
Pascal, Pensées.
HOW unlike our shores,
Where with ten thousand tongues each city roars!
There to all men, whate'er their age or walk,
Life's one great solemn business is to talk.
There what the penny press by morning write
Is echoed for a halfpenny at night:
There stump young Ministers; old Maids debate;
There loud Professors scold like Billingsgate:
There, as the World into the Church expands,
A moral Atheist spouts in parson's bands;
And poets, doubtful of the parts of speech,
Desperate of rhyme, acquire the art to preach.
Windbag, in Courthope's Paradise of Birds.
RINCE METTERNICH said to Lord Dudley, "You are the only Englishman I know who speaks good French. It is remarked, the common people in Vienna speak better than the educated men in London." "That may well be," replied Lord Dudley. "Your Highness should recollect that Buonaparte has not been twice in London to teach them."
Crabb Robinson, Diary.