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This appears in his dialogue On Oratory, and the attribution of the modern version of the direct quote to him is a bit of a misattribution because he doesn't say it (ironically) in so few words.

The parent I responded to gave the exact Pascal quote, but it has been given in many forms by many writers, all of whom had likely read quite a bit of Cicero.

Martin Luther also talked the same way about his sermons far earlier than Pascal.

The well-known Shakespeare quote, "Brevity is the soul of wit" is also another (loose) translation of a passage from On Oratory.



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