On this day in 1754,
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, French diplomat, gourmet, and stateman was born. He was
also one of the greatest wisecrackers the world has ever known. Napoleon, no slouch himself
in this area, described him as “a piece of dung in a silk stocking”. Victor Hugo,
one of the greatest writers in any language, wrote of him:
He was a strange, redoubtable, and important personage; his name was Charles Maurice de Périgord; he was of noble descent, like Machiavelli, a priest like Gondi, unfrocked like Fouché, witty like Voltaire, and lame like the devil. It might be averred that everything in him was lame like himself,—the nobility which he had placed at the service of the Republic, the priesthood which he had dragged through the parade ground, then cast into the gutter, the marriage which he had broken off through a score of exposures and a voluntary separation, the understanding which he disgraced by acts of baseness.
Read all of this, by the way. It is touching, revealing, terrible. Hugo at his best.
Here’s a sample of some of Talleyrand’s mots:
“A court is an assembly of noble and distinguished beggars.”
“Love of glory can only create a great hero; contempt of glory creates a great man.”
“Merit, however inconsiderable, should be sought for and rewarded. Methods are the master of masters.”
“Mistrust first impulses; they are nearly always good.”
“Ones reputation is like a shadow, it is gigantic when it precedes you, and a pigmy in proportion when it follows.”
“She is such a good friend that she would throw all her acquaintances into the water for the pleasure of fishing them out again.”
“Since the masses are always eager to believe something, for their benefit nothing is so easy to arrange as facts.”
“Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts.”
“The art of statesmanship is to foresee the inevitable and to expedite its occurrence.”
“This is the beginning of the end.”
“To succeed in the world, it is much more necessary to possess the penetration to discern who is a fool, than to discover who is a clever man.”
“Too much sensibility creates unhappiness and too much insensibility creates crime.”
“War is much too serious a thing to be left to military men.”
“It is not an event, it is a piece of news.”
“You do not play then at whist, sir? Alas, what a sad old age you are preparing for yourself!”
“I know where there is more wisdom than is found in Napoleon, Voltaire, or all the ministers present and to come—in public opinion.”
and my favorite “This is worse than a crime, it’s a blunder.”
“Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts” – wonderful!