Original text (incomplete): L'égalité est une expression d'envie. Elle signifie, dans le cœur de tout républicain : personne ne sera dans une meilleure situation que moi.[...]
Conversation with Nassau William Senior, 22 May 1850 Nassau, p. 94 http://books.google.com/books?id=KuzvHHBxuqgC&pg=PA94&vq=%22an+expression+of+envy%22&dq=tocqueville+william+nassau&lr=&source=gbs_search_s&cad=0
1850s and later
Variant: Equality is a slogan based on envy. It signifies in the heart of every republican: "Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I."
“It is better not to express what one means than to express what one does not mean.”
Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)
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Karl Kraus 94
Czech playwright and publicist 1874–1936Related quotes
[4] Symbol
Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1984)
Context: What is a symbol? Etymologically speaking, the word σύμβολον comes from σνμβάλλω, to throw-with, to make something coincide with something else: a symbol was originally an identification mark made up of two halves of a coin or of a medal. Two halves of the same thing, either one standing for the other, both becoming, however, fully effective only when they matched to make up, again, the original whole. … in the original concept of symbol, there is the suggestion of a final recomposition. Etymologies, however, do not necessarily tell the truth — or, at least, they tell the truth, in terms of historical, not of structural, semantics. What is frequently appreciated in many so-called symbols is exactly their vagueness, their openness, their fruitful ineffectiveness to express a 'final' meaning, so that with symbols and by symbols one indicates what is always beyond one's reach.
Source: 1920s, "Picasso Speaks" (1923), p. 391.
Source: 1850s, Attack upon Christendom (1855), p. 121
“That expression, "He means well," is useless unless he does well.”
Nequam illud verbum‘st, Bene vult, nisi qui bene facit.
Trinummus, Act II, sc. 4, line 37.
Trinummus (The Three Coins)
Source: The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (2004), Chapter 46 “Prelude to the Negative Confession” (p. 260)