Charles Bossut Quote

Modesty is a desertion of ourselves, a kind of avowal of inferiority, at which mediocrity catches greedily as a source of consolation, which it endeavors to interpret in the literal sense, and which it frequently employs as a weapon to keep at a distance the timid man of genius,

A General History of Mathematics from the Earliest Times to the Middle, of the Eighteenth Century, Author's Preface (p. xx), Printed for J. Johnson. 1803