Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 25 of the 1985 Liberty Fund edition of Adam Smith’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres; specifically, it’s from Smith’s November 29th, 1762, lecture “Of what is called the tropes and figures of speech”:

When the sentiment of the speaker is expressed in a neat, clear, plain, and clever manner, and the passion or affection he is possessed of and intends, by sympathy, to communicate to his hearer, is plainly and cleverly hit off, then and then only the expression has all the force and beauty that language can give it.