“Always speak the truth, think before you speak, and write it down afterwards.”
“The child speaks words with his memory long before he speaks them with his tongue.”
1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
“Distrust the man who smiles before he speaks.”
Méfie-toi de celui qui rit avant de parler!
Tartarin sur les Alpes (1885; repr. New York: H. Holt, 1917) p. 89; Katharine Prescott Wormeley (trans.) Tartarin of Tarascon. To Which is Added Tartarin on the Alps (Boston: Little, Brown, 1900) p. 241.
Conversation with Jean Martet (18 December 1927), Ch. 11, p. 167.
Clemenceau, The Events of His Life (1930)
Context: A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he’s not a man of action. It is as if a tennis player before returning a ball stopped to think about his views of the physical and mental advantages of tennis. You must act as you breathe.
Source: The Doctrine of the Mean
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), IX The Practice of Painting
Context: When you wish to represent a man speaking to a number of people, consider the matter of which he has to treat and adapt his action to the subject. Thus, if he speaks persuasively, let his action be appropriate to it. If the matter in hand be to set forth an argument, let the speaker, with the fingers of the right hand hold one finger of the left hand, having the two smaller ones closed; and his face alert, and turned towards the people with mouth a little open, to look as though he spoke; and if he is sitting let him appear as though about to rise, with his head forward. If you represent him standing make him leaning slightly forward with body and head towards the people. These you must represent as silent and attentive, all looking at the orator's face with gestures of admiration; and make some old men in astonishment at the things they hear, with the corners of their mouths pulled down and drawn in, their cheeks full of furrows, and their eyebrows raised, and wrinkling the forehead where they meet.
André Breton or the Quest of the Beginning
Alternating Current (1967)
“The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.”
James Legge translation.
Variant translations: The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his actions.
The greater man does not boast of himself, But does what he must do.
A good man does not give orders, but leads by example.
The Analects, Chapter I, Chapter IV
