9 May 1830
Table Talk (1821–1834)
“Petty souls are more susceptible to ambition than great ones, just as straw or thatched cottages burn more easily than palaces.”
L'ambition prend aux petites âmes plus facilement qu'aux grandes, comme le feu prend plus aisément à la paille, aux chaumières qu'aux palais.
Maximes et Pensées, #68
Reflections
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Nicolas Chamfort 54
French writer 1741–1794Related quotes
This misquote could possibly have two possible sources: an abridged version of a paragraph in Mein Kampf regarding the Big Lie, or a report by the United States Office of Strategic Services about Hitler's psychological profile http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/oss-profile-03-02.html. The second version is very close to an actual quote by Joseph Goebbels.
Misattributed
Variant: The bigger/more blatant a lie, the more people will believe it.
“It was just a coat hanger, and … it didn’t hurt any more than a cigarette burn.”
Attributed by Gary Trudeau (2004-07-14) http://www.nbcnews.com/id/5439743
Attributed, Private/attributed
“The palace is not safe, when the cottage is not happy.”
Speech to Wynyard Horticultural Show (1848), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 709.
1840s
“No Indian prince has to his palace
More followers than a thief to the gallows.”
Canto I, line 273
Source: Hudibras, Part II (1664)
“Men are more often bribed by their loyalties and ambitions than by money.”
United States v. Wunderlich, 342 U.S. 98, 103 (1951)
Judicial opinions
Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters and Journals (illustrated) by Maria Mitchell, 1896 http://pinetreeweb.com/bp-admiral.htm.
Home, Sweet Home (1822), from the opera of "Clari, the Maid of Milan", reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).