Originally published January 18, 2013

"Twice have [millions] called me to the throne . . . Who are you? nothing! . . . I am the throne!" – Napoleon, to the Legislature, 1813 (shortly before his downfall)

IN THE MOUTH OF 2 OR 300 WITNESSES A THING SHALL BE ESTABLISHED. Last week I argued that my tendency to quote others is not madness but method. The one-liners below, an excerpt from a previous column, ought to establish my premise:

- "If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the primary difference between a dog and a man." – Mark Twain

- "The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I'm against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise." – Robert Frost (1874-1963)

- "Those who have given themselves the most concern about the happiness of peoples have made their neighbors very miserable." – Anatole France (1844-1924)

- "The common excuse of those who bring misfortune on others is that they desired their good." – de Vaunenargues

- "Striving to better, we often mar what's well." – Wm. Shakespeare (1564-1616)

- "When the well's dry, we know the worth of water." – Franklin

- "The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities." – Sophocles (496-406 BC)

- "Rich man down and poor man up – they are still not even." – Yiddish proverb

- O Beware my lord of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on." – Shakespeare

- "A show of envy is an insult to oneself." – Yevgeny Yevtushenko

- "Envy is a timid and shamefaced passion we never dare to acknowledge." – Duc Rochefaucauld (1613-1680)

- "Jealousy is the fear of superiority; envy is the uneasiness under it." – Wm. Shenstone ((1714-1763)

- "People hate those who make them feel their own inferiority." – Chesterfield

- "What we cannot possess, we cheapen." – author unknown

- "Pride is generally censured and decried, but mainly by those who have nothing to be proud of." – Arthur Schoepenhauer (1788-1860)

- "To know your ruling passion, examine your castles in the air." – Archbishop Richard Whately (1787-1863)

- "There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy." – Richard Sheridan (1751-1816)

- "Envy always slays itself by its own arrows." Unknown

- "He who knows how to flatter also knows how to slander." – Napoleon

- "Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers." – Rochefaucauld

- "Popularity? It is glory's small change." – Hugo (1802-1885)

- "Talkers are no good doers." – Shakespeare

- "The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency . . . from not knowing what is going on in other people's minds." – Walter Bagehot (1826-1877)

- "Every individual or national degeneration is immediately revealed by a directly proportional degeneration in language." – Joseph Marie-de Maistre

- "How many people become abstract as a way of appearing profound!" – Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)

- "Nothing is more despicable than a professional talker who uses words as a quack uses his remedies." – Fenelon (1651-1715)

- "You can't multiply money by dividing it." – author unknown

- "The enemies of the future are always the nicest people." – Christopher Morley (1890-1957)

- "The utopian schemes of leveling and a community of goods are as visionary and impracticable as those which vest all property in the Crown . . . [they] are arbitrary, despotic, and in our government, unconstitutional." – Sam Adams

P.S. Can you hear us now?