I only quote others the better to quote myself.
[Je ne dis les autres, sinon pour d’autant plus me dire.]
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist
Essays, Book 1, ch. 25 (1.25), “Of the Education of Children [De l’institution des enfans]” (1579) [tr. Screech (1987), 1.26]
(Source)
This essay was in the 1st (1588) edition, but this passage was added as of the 3rd (1595) ed. Some translators use the 1588 sequence of chapters, not the 1595, and so identify this as ch. 26.
(Source (French)). Alternate translations:I never spake of others, but that I may the more speake of my selfe.
[tr. Florio (1603)]Neither have I said so much of others, but to get a better opportunity to explain myself.
[tr. Cotton (1686); Cotton/Hazlitt (1877)]I quote others only in order the better to express myself.
[tr. Hazlitt/Wight (1879)]I do not quote others, save the more fully to express myself.
[tr. Ives (1925), 1.26]I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.
[tr. Frame (1943), 1.26]I only quote others to make myself more explicit.
[tr. Cohen (1958), 1.26]
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People in France have a phrase: “Spirit of the Stairway.” In French: Esprit d’Escalier. It means that moment when you find the answer but it’s too late. So you’re at a party and someone insults you. You have to say something. So, under pressure, with everybody watching, you say something lame. But the moment you leave the party …
As you start down the stairway, then — magic. You come up with the perfect thing you should’ve said. The perfect crippling put down.
That’s the Spirit of the Stairway.
The trouble is, even the French don’t have a phrase for the stupid things you actually do say under pressure. Those stupid, desperate things you actually think or do.
Clarity in language depends on clarity in thought.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (1917-2007) American historian, author, social critic
Interview with Brian Lamb, C-SPAN (10 May 1998)
Don’t let them tell us stories. Don’t let them say of the man sentenced to death “He is going to pay his debt to society,” but: “They are going to cut off his head.” It looks like nothing. But it does make a little difference.
Albert Camus (1913-1960) Algerian-French novelist, essayist, playwright
“Entre oui et non,” in L’Envers et l’endroit (1937)
Translated as "Between Yes and No", in World Review (Mar 1950).
