We have oftener than once endeavoured to attach some meaning to that aphorism, vulgarly imputed to Shaftesbury, which however we can find nowhere in his works, that "ridicule is the test of truth."
Thomas Carlyle
Character
A quote by Thomas Carlyle
From the source
Voltaire. Foreign Review, 1829.
Recorded in John Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, ninth edition, 1905 printing.