quote · Words worth keeping
Nothing is so infectious as example, and we never do great good or evil without producing the like. We imitate good actions by emulation, and bad ones by the evil of our nature, which shame imprisons until example liberates.
Nothing is so infectious as example, and we never do great good or evil without producing the like. We imitate good actions by emulation, and bad ones by the evil of our nature, which shame imprisons until example liberates.
Attribution & collection notes
- Author or tradition
- Francis, Duc De La Rochefoucauld
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin. - Historical period
- c. 1646 AD · renaissance
author lifetime midpoint (1613–1680); not quotation composition date; not necessarily a composition date.
The voice behind the words.
Listed in the author section of Bartlett’s ninth-edition anthology, in the linked 1905 printing. Dates reflect that historical edition and may differ from modern scholarship.
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