“I'm the man of the hour, the man with the power, too sweet to be sour.”

Epistle to the Reader.
The Compleat Angler (1653-1655)

700 Inspiring Guides to a New Life

Les heures sont faictez pour l'homme, & non l'homme pour les heures.
Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 39 (frère Iean des Entommeures).

Source: Thieves' Paradise

Act V, scene iv.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

The London Literary Gazette (24th January 1835) Versions from the German (Fourth Series.) 'The Empire of Woman' — Schiller.
Translations, From the German

If This Is a Man (1947)
Source: If This Is a Man / The Truce

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Compensation
Context: Every excess causes a defect; every defect an excess. Every sweet hath its sour; every evil its good. Every faculty which is a receiver of pleasure has an equal penalty put on its abuse. It is to answer for its moderation with its life. For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly. For every thing you have missed, you have gained something else; and for every thing you gain, you lose something. If riches increase, they are increased that use them. If the gatherer gathers too much, nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies and exceptions.

The Wanderer, Prologue, Stanza 1, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).