1820s, Letter to F. Corbin (1820)
“Men's minds are as variant as their faces, and, where the motives of their actions are pure, the operation of the former is no more to be imputed to them as a crime, than the appearance of the latter; for both, being the work of nature, are alike unavoidable.”
Letter to Benjamin Harrison V (9 March 1789), published in Washington's Writings: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, Selected and Published from the Original Manuscripts https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=DTlEAQAAMAAJ&rdid=book-DTlEAQAAMAAJ&rdot=1, Volume IX, p. 475.
1780s
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
George Washington 186
first President of the United States 1732–1799Related quotes
As quoted by Tai-yi Lin (Lin Yutang's daughter) in her Foreword (26 March 1950) to The Importance of Living, p. x
“Fate, however, is to all appearance more unavoidable than unexpected.”
Parallel Lives, Caesar
Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago
Source: An imitation of life (1950), p. 42.
François-René de Chateaubriand, in Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1848 – 1850), Book VI, Ch. 8 : Comparison of Washington and Bonaparte
About
Context: Bonaparte robs a nation of its independence: deposed as emperor, he is sent into exile, where the world’s anxiety still does not think him safely enough imprisoned, guarded by the Ocean. He dies: the news proclaimed on the door of the palace in front of which the conqueror had announced so many funerals, neither detains nor astonishes the passer-by: what have the citizens to mourn?
Washington's Republic lives on; Bonaparte’s empire is destroyed. Washington and Bonaparte emerged from the womb of democracy: both of them born to liberty, the former remained faithful to her, the latter betrayed her.