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I have sat, a minister and ambassador, covered with gold lace, gaudy with ribbons and decorations, at the table of kings, the feasts of princes and princesses, only to fall once more into indigence and know imprisonment.

— François-René de Chateaubriand

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More quotes by François-René de Chateaubriand

I am Bourbon as a matter of honour, royalist according to reason and conviction, and republican by taste and character.

De la restauration et de la monarchie élective (1831)

The original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.

As soon as a true thought has entered our mind, it gives a light which makes us see a crowd of other objects which we have never perceived before.

In living literature no person is a competent judge but of works written in his own language.

I have explored the seas of the Old World and the New, and trodden the soil of the four quarters of the Earth.

Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1848)

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