1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)
“The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.”
“I make it a point never to trust men with weapons to my windpipe.”
Prologue “A Strained Conversation” (p. 2)
Red Seas Under Red Skies (2007)
“I have never asked for my position, never snatched or done any kind of scheming.”
2014, "GhoshanaPatra with Narendra Modi", 2014
Context: I never proposed my candidature for anything or for any post since I have been born. Decision [regarding] me is taken by BJP. I have never asked for my position, never snatched or done any kind of scheming. Whenever I have been bestowed a work I do it with full dedication, hard work and have sacrificed my life for it.
Statement in the House of Commons after failing to arrest five members (4 January 1642), from the journal of Sir Simonds d'Ewes
The Lifted Veil (1859); Eliot here quotes the Latin epitaph of Jonathan Swift, translated as "Where savage indignation can lacerate his heart no more" · The Lifted Veil online at Wikisource
Context: I wish to use my last hours of ease and strength in telling the strange story of my experience. I have never fully unbosomed myself to any human being; I have never been encouraged to trust much in the sympathy of my fellow-men. But we have all a chance of meeting with some pity, some tenderness, some charity, when we are dead: it is the living only who cannot be forgiven — the living only from whom men's indulgence and reverence are held off, like the rain by the hard east wind. While the heart beats, bruise it — it is your only opportunity; while the eye can still turn towards you with moist, timid entreaty, freeze it with an icy unanswering gaze; while the ear, that delicate messenger to the inmost sanctuary of the soul, can still take in the tones of kindness, put it off with hard civility, or sneering compliment, or envious affectation of indifference; while the creative brain can still throb with the sense of injustice, with the yearning for brotherly recognition — make haste — oppress it with your ill-considered judgements, your trivial comparisons, your careless misrepresentations. The heart will by and by be still — "ubi saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit" the eye will cease to entreat; the ear will be deaf; the brain will have ceased from all wants as well as from all work. Then your charitable speeches may find vent; then you may remember and pity the toil and the struggle and the failure; then you may give due honour to the work achieved; then you may find extenuation for errors, and may consent to bury them.
1800s, First Inaugural Address (1801)
Context: I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts.
Finnish minister Sanna Marin, 34, to become world's youngest PM, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50709422BBC News, (9 December 2019)
