“The wisest man could ask no more of Fate
Than to be simple, modest, manly, true,
Safe from the Many — honored by the Few;
To count as naught in World or Church or State;
But inwardly in secret to be great.”
Sonnet, Jeffries Wyman (1874)
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Than to be simple, modest, manly, true,
Safe from the Many — honored by the …" by James Russell Lowell?
James Russell Lowell 175
American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat 1819–1891Related quotes
James Russell Lowell
(1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat
"On the Capture of Certain Fugitive Slaves Near Washington" (1845)
Robert Hunter (author)
(1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect
Source: Violence and the Labor Movement (1914), p. 91
“Many have pursued honor, and in the pursuit lost more of it than ever they could gain.”
Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book IV: Taran Wanderer (1967), Chapter 21
Context: “When I was a child I dreamed of adventure, glory, honor in feats of arms. I think now that these things are shadows.”
“If you see them as shadows then you see them for what they are,” Annlaw agreed. “Many have pursued honor, and in the pursuit lost more of it than ever they could gain.”
Boris Yeltsin
(1931–2007) 1st President of Russia and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR
1990s, Farewell speech (1999)
Context: Today, on this day that is so extraordinarily important for me, I want to say just a few more personal words than usual.
I want to ask for your forgiveness.
For the fact that many of the dreams we shared did not come true. And for the fact that what seemed simple to us turned out to be tormentingly difficult. I ask forgiveness for not justifying some hopes of those people who believed that at one stroke, in one spurt, we could leap from the gray, stagnant, totalitarian past into the light, rich, civilized future. I myself believed in this, that we could overcome everything in one spurt.
I turned out to be too naive in something. In some places, problems seemed to be too complicated. We forced our way forward through mistakes, through failures. Many people in this hard time experienced shock.
“It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple: one must be a woman manly, or a man womanly.”
Variant: It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly.... Some marriage of opposites has to be consummated.
Source: A Room of One's Own