It is always easy as well as agreeable for the inferior ranks of mankind to claim merit from the contempt of that pomp and pleasure which fortune has placed beyond their reach. The virtue of the primitive Christians, like that of the first Romans, was very frequently guarded by poverty and ignorance.

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) English historian

The Decline And Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 2, ch. 15 (1781)
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See La Rochefoucauld.