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Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (7,890)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (6,017)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,944)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (5,107)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,887)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (4,270)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,930)
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- Letter to Clara Rilke (1 Jan 1907) (3,577)
- “A Cult of Ignorance,” Newsweek (21 Jan 1980) (3,461)
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Adams, John • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Goethe, Johann von • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • James, William • Jefferson, Thomas • Johnson, Lyndon • Johnson, Samuel • Kennedy, John F. • King, Martin Luther • La Rochefoucauld, Francois • Lewis, C.S. • Lincoln, Abraham • Mencken, H.L. • Orwell, George • Pratchett, Terry • Roosevelt, Eleanor • Roosevelt, Theodore • Russell, Bertrand • Seneca the Younger • Shakespeare, William • Shaw, George Bernard • Stevenson, Adlai • Stevenson, Robert Louis • Twain, Mark • Watterson, Bill • Wilde, Oscar- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
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- 8-Jan-21 - ***Dave Does the Blog on Speech to the electors of Bristol (3 Nov 1774).
- 4-Jan-21 - Doing the Numbers, 12/2020 | WIST on Republic, Book 1, 347c.
- 4-Jan-21 - Doing the Numbers, 12/2020 | WIST on “On The Conduct of Life” (1822).
- 4-Jan-21 - Doing the Numbers, 12/2020 | WIST on Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962).
- 4-Jan-21 - Doing the Numbers, 12/2020 | WIST on Letter to Clara Rilke (1 Jan 1907).
- 4-Jan-21 - Doing the Numbers, 12/2020 | WIST on “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933).
And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it,
neither brave man nor coward, I tell you —
it’s born with us the day that we are born.[Μοῖραν δ’ οὔ τινά φημι πεφυγμένον ἔμμεναι ἀνδρῶν,
οὐ κακὸν οὐδὲ μὲν ἐσθλόν, ἐπὴν τὰ πρῶτα γένηται.]Homer (fl. 7th-8th C. BC) Greek author
The Iliad, Book 6, ll. 488-89 (c. 750 BC) [tr. Fagles (1990), ll. 582-84]
Hector bidding his wife farewell. Alt. trans.:
And fate, whose wings can fly?
Noble, ignoble, fate controls. Once born, the best must die.
[tr. Chapman (1611), ll. 528-29]
Fixed is the term to all the race of earth,
And such the hard condition of our birth.
No force can then resist, no flight can save;
All sink alike, the fearful and the brave.
[tr. Pope (1715-20)]
Nor lives he who can overpass the date
By heaven assign’d him, be he base or brave
[tr. Cowper (1791), ll. 595-96]
But I think there is no one of men who has escaped fate, neither the coward nor the brave man, after he has once been born.
[tr. Buckley (1860)]
If a man's hour is come, be he brave or be he coward, there is no escape for him when he has once been born.
[tr. Butler (1898)]
Only his doom, methinks, no man hath ever escaped, be he coward or valiant, when once he hath been born.
[tr. Murray (1924)]