
“I envy people who drink — at least they know what to blame everything on.”
As quoted in The Portable Curmudgeon (1992) by Jon Winokur, p. 88.
Humility.
Table Talk (1689)
“I envy people who drink — at least they know what to blame everything on.”
As quoted in The Portable Curmudgeon (1992) by Jon Winokur, p. 88.
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified
This is a rhyme used in Merrick's sideshow pamphlet, and which he is said to have often repeated, and used to sign his letters, followed by a quotation from "False Greatness" by Isaac Watts, first published in Horae Lyricae (1706) Bk. II:
If I could reach from pole to pole
or grasp the ocean with a span,
I would be measured by the soul
The mind's the standard of the Man.
As reported by Heraclides Ponticus (c. 360 BC), and Diogenes Laërtius, in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, "Pythagoras", Sect. 6, in the translation of C. D. Yonge (1853)
Thesis and Antithesis http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/C/CloughArthurHugh/verse/poemsproseremains/antithesis.html, st. 4.