William F Buckley Junr, few posts back ('...people who like that sort of thing...') was, to put it politely, requoting (or, less politely, plagiarisising) Abe Lincoln, who appears from Oxford Dict of Quotations to have originated this formulation -- subsequently reused [usually, as here, without acknowledgment] by the likes of Buckley, Muriel Spark as a "Miss Jean Brodie-ism", &c &c.

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