“No one is bound to be clever, but every one is under an obligation to be good.”

— Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac

Il n'y a personne qui soit tenu d'être habile; mais il n'y en a point qui ne soit obligé d'être bon.
Aristippe, ou De la cour (1658), Discours VII.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 66.

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Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac8

French author, best known for his epistolary essays 1597–1654

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