The Apology of Algernon Sydney, in the Day of his Death (1683), as quoted in Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis, 1677-1683 (2002) by Jonathan Scott, p. 337.
Context: I thought fit to leave this testimony to the world, that, as I had from my youth endeavored to uphold the Common rights of mankind, the lawes of this land, and the true Protestant religion, against corrupt principles, arbitrary power and Popery, I doe now willingly lay down my life for the same; and having a sure witness within me, that God doth absolve me, and uphold me, in the utmost extremityes, am very littell sollicitous, though man doth condemne me.
“Converse with men makes sharp the glittering wit,
But God to man doth speak in solitude.”
Sonnet, Highland Solitude; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 729.
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John Stuart Blackie 3
Scottish scholar and man of letters 1809–1895Related quotes
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“[A proverb is] one man's wit, and all men's wisdom.”
Remark to James Mackintosh on October 6, 1830, reported in his posthumous memoir, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh, Vol. 2 (1836), p. 472 http://books.google.com/books?id=wHM4AAAAYAAJ&q=%22one+man's+wit+and+all+men's+wisdom%22&pg=PA472#v=onepage
Variant: [A proverb is] the wisdom of many and the wit of one.