“Ashamed to decline the challenge, yet fearing to accept it.”
VII. 93 (tr. Samuel Butler).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
Source: Framley Parsonage (1861), Ch. 26
“Ashamed to decline the challenge, yet fearing to accept it.”
VII. 93 (tr. Samuel Butler).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
“To win real rewards, we must firmly decline the deceptive rewards offered by society.”
Vernon Howard (1918–1992) American writer
1500 Ways to Escape the Human Jungle
“I must decline your offer with thanks, for the child might have my beauty and your brains.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright
Anecdote presented in "Isadore Duncan : Dancer as Plaything of Fate" in A Century of Sundays : 100 years of Breaking News in the Sunday Papers (2006), by Nadine Dreyer, p. 65 http://books.google.com/books?id=5rFGX4z8-S8C&pg=PA65&dq=%22Love+is+an+illusion;+it+is+the+world's+greatest+mistake%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=NPAkT7mJDJKy0AH5vcXkCA&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22Love%20is%20an%20illusion%3B%20it%20is%20the%20world's%20greatest%20mistake%22&f=false; the anecdote provided here does not cite earlier sources, and though widely attributed to an exchange between Duncan and Shaw, the earliest form of it yet located is in 10,000 Jokes, Toasts & Stories (1939) by Lewis & Faye Copeland, which simply has an unidentified woman offering to have a child with Shaw, saying "think of the child with your brains and my beauty" and him replying "But what if he were to have your brains and my beauty?" <br class="br">Disputed <br class="br">Context: [Isadora Duncan] wrote to George Bernard Shaw: "Will you be the father of my next child? A combination of my beauty and your brains would startle the world," but he replied: "I must decline your offer with thanks, for the child might have my beauty and your brains."
Robin Sloan (1979) American writer
A Messiah, a first disciple, and a rapture. Check, check, and double-check. Penumbra is, right now, teetering right on the boundary between charmingly weird old guy and disturbingly weird old guy. Two things tip the scales toward charm: First, his wry smile, which is not the smile of the disturbed, and micromuscles don’t lie. Second, the look in Kat’s eyes. She’s enthralled. I guess people believe weirder things than this, right? Presidents and popes believe weirder things than this.
Source: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (2012), Chapter 15 “The Strangest Clerk in Five Hundred Years” (p. 136)
David Mitchell (1969) English novelist
Interview in Stop Smiling magazine (29 June 2007) http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/story_detail.php?id=841
Kurt Hahn (1886–1974) German educator
Quoted by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, at Colorado Outward Bound's 25th anniversary in 1987; as cited in Leadership the Outward Bound Way (2007), ISBN 159485033X.
Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist
letter to Adelaide Kuntz, June 23, 1928, Archives of American Art; as quoted in Marsden Hartley, by Gail R. Scott, Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988, New York p. 81
1921 - 1930