Zero not wishing to go stark naked, clothed himself in vanity.
O vanity!
The patching up of everything with big words! a kitchen is a laboratory, a dancer is a professor, an acrobat is a gymnast, a boxer is a pugilist, an apothecary is a chemist, a wigmaker is an artist, a hodman is an architect, a jockey is a sportsman, a wood-louse is a pterigybranche.
Vanity has a right and a wrong side; the right side is stupid, it is the negro with his glass beads; the wrong side is foolish, it is the philosopher with his rags.
I weep over the one and I laugh over the other.
What are called honors and dignities, and even dignity and honor, are generally of pinchbeck.
Kings make playthings of human pride.
Caligula made a horse a consul; Charles II. made a knight of a sirloin.
Wrap yourself up now, then, between Consul Incitatus and Baronet Roastbeef.
As for the intrinsic value of people, it is no longer respectable in the least.
Listen to the panegyric which neighbor makes of neighbor.
White on white is ferocious; if the lily could speak, what a setting down it would give the dove!
A bigoted woman prating of a devout woman is more venomous than the asp and the cobra.
It is a shame that I am ignorant, otherwise I would quote to you a mass of things; but I know nothing.
For instance, I have always been witty; when I was a pupil of Gros, instead of daubing wretched little pictures, I passed my time in pilfering apples; rapin24 is the masculine of rapine.
So much for myself; as for the rest of you, you are worth no more than I am.
I scoff at your perfections, excellencies, and qualities.
Every good quality tends towards a defect; economy borders on avarice, the generous man is next door to the prodigal, the brave man rubs elbows with the braggart; he who says very pious says a trifle bigoted; there are just as many vices in virtue as there are holes in Diogenes’ cloak.
Whom do you admire, the slain or the slayer, C?sar or Brutus?
Generally men are in favor of the slayer.
Long live Brutus, he has slain!
There lies the virtue.
Virtue, granted, but madness also.
There are queer spots on those great men.
The Brutus who killed C?sar was in love with the statue of a little boy.
This statue was from the hand of the Greek sculptor Strongylion, who also carved that figure of an Amazon known as the Beautiful Leg, Eucnemos, which Nero carried with him in his travels.
This Strongylion left but two statues which placed Nero and Brutus in accord.
Brutus was in love with the one, Nero with the other.
All history is nothing but wearisome repetition.
One century is the plagiarist of the other.
The battle of Marengo copies the battle of Pydna; the Tolbiac of Clovis and the Austerlitz of Napoleon are as like each other as two drops of water.
I don’t attach much importance to victory.
Nothing is so stupid as to conquer; true glory lies in convincing.
But try to prove something!
If you are content with success, what mediocrity, and with conquering, what wretchedness!
Alas, vanity and cowardice everywhere.
Everything obeys success, even grammar.
Si volet usus, says Horace.
Therefore I disdain the human race.
Shall we descend to the party at all?
Do you wish me to begin admiring the peoples?
What people, if you please?
Shall it be Greece?
The Athenians, those Parisians of days gone by, slew Phocion, as we might say Coligny, and fawned upon tyrants to such an extent that Anacephorus said of Pisistratus: “His urine attracts the bees.”
The most prominent man in Greece for fifty years was that grammarian Philetas, who was so small and so thin that he was obliged to load his shoes with lead in order not to be blown away by the wind.
There stood on the great square in Corinth a statue carved by Silanion and catalogued by Pliny; this statue represented Episthates.
What did Episthates do?
He invented a trip.
That sums up Greece and glory.
Let us pass on to others.