“Cato said, "I had rather men should ask why my statue is not set up, than why it is."”

— Plutarch

Political Precepts
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

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Plutarch 251

ancient Greek historian and philosopher 46–127

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“I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue, than why I have one.”

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Attributed to Cato in Plutarch, Parallel Lives 19:4 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0013%3Achapter%3D19.
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Context: Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,
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Jean Sirmond (1589–1649) French poet

Causæ Bibendi, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). These lines are a poetic translation of a Latin epigram (erroneously ascribed to Henry Aldrich in the Biographia Britannica, second edition, vol. i. p. 131), which Menage and De la Monnoye attribute to Père Sirmond:
Si bene commemini, causæ sunt quinque bibendi:
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Menagiana, vol. i. p. 172.