Lamennais, the Abbé F de

[Pete Laubscher]

Can anyone please help? Not being fluent (at all) in French, I cannot find the page reference to this alleged quotation from Lamennais's book 'Essai sur l'indifférence en matière de religion' (of about 1823-8) without a translation of the English quotation. Could anyone please translate it the way a 19th century French cleric might have done? The reference I suppose comes from the second volume. But the 'xiii' has me stumped completely. I'd be very grateful if anyone could assist. Thanks.

"Nothing is so evident to us today that we can be sure we shall not find it either doubtful or erroneous to-morrow" (Essai sur l'indifférence, II, xiii).”

[Neil Coffey]

Have you tried looking on Google Books?
There is a sentence that goes as follows, although your translation is something of a paraphrase:

"Je n'ai pas l'intention de me croire infaillible; d'autres hommes peuvent trouver douteux ce qui me paraît démontré, faux ce qui me paraît vrai."

[Pete Laubscher]

Thank you so much! No I haven't. Any chance of an url where the sentence was found?

[Neil Coffey]

Sorry, it's difficult to give a URL for a specific page, but if you search for the book title in books.google.com, then search for one of the key words such as "infaillible" or "douteux", you should hopefully find it.

N.B. I've modernised one or two spellings in the quote above. Until around 1830 or so (and in some cases a bit later), it was common for what is now written ai to be written oi, hence paraît would originally have been paroît.

[Pete Laubscher]

Yes, I will (and have with success - what a useful service it is!). MUCH obliged for the education.

Yes, interesting the spelling. I failed to find an answer in Collins Robert and Cassell's, until I guessed what you have confirmed - as a language ages.

BTW: Any preference between the two dictionaries?