“They flattered the ambitious and all the ills came gradually to a head. Murder drowning everything was allowed. Intriguers monopolised all the offices. Good men could only mutter for if they spoke they were lost. Hatred vengeance everything was permitted and nobody dared open his mouth…”
quoted in Warren Roberts (2000). Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Louis Prieur, Revolutionary. p. 321: About the French Revolution.
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Jacques-Louis Ménétra 3
glazier, tradesman 1738–1812Related quotes

Book II, 2.35-[1]-[3]
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book II
Context: I could have wished that the reputations of many brave men were not to be imperilled in the mouth of a single individual, to stand or fall according as he spoke well or ill. For it is hard to speak properly upon a subject where it is even difficult to convince your hearers that you are speaking the truth. On the one hand, the friend who is familiar with every fact of the story may think that some point has not been set forth with that fullness which he wishes and knows it to deserve; on the other, he who is a stranger to the matter may be led by envy to suspect exaggeration if he hears anything above his own nature. For men can endure to hear others praised only so long as they can severally persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity.

“How bewitched I was! How could there be any good in a woman that everybody spoke ill of?”
Bk. V, ch. 3
The Return of the Native (1878)

“All of us lost something. Some of us lost everything.”
Source: The Lost Herondale

Source: (1940), V