The Elephant's Child.
Just So Stories (1902)
“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
As quoted in The Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1896) by Jehiel K̀eeler Hoyt, p. 763
Édouard Fournier, in L'Espirit dans l'Historie (1867), 3rd edition, Ch. 51, p. 260, disputes the traditional attribution, and suggests various agents of Richelieu might have been the actual author.
David Hackett Fischer, in Champlain's Dream (2009), Simon & Schuster, p. 704, n. 14, says it's a paraphrase of Quintilian and there is no source closer to Richelieu than Francoise Bertaut's Memoires pour servir à l'histoire d'Anne d'Autriche.
Disputed
Original
Qu’on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnete homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Variant: Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
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Cardinal Richelieu 7
French clergyman, noble and statesman 1585–1642Related quotes
Letter III
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
Context: The Mahometans say their Koran was written by God. The Hindoos say the Vedas were; we say the Bible was, and we are but interested witnesses in deciding absolutely and exclusively for ourselves. If it be immeasurably the highest of the three, it is because it is not the most divine but the most human. It does not differ from them in kind; and it seems to me that in ascribing it to God we are doing a double dishonour; to ourselves for want of faith in our soul's strength, and to God in making Him responsible for our weakness. There is nothing in it but what men might have written; much, oh much, which it would drive me mad to think any but men, and most mistaken men, had written. Yet still, as a whole, it is by far the noblest collection of sacred books in the world; the outpouring of the mind of a people in whom a larger share of God's spirit was for many centuries working than in any other of mankind, or who at least most clearly caught and carried home to themselves the idea of the direct and immediate dependence of the world upon Him. It is so good that as men looked at it they said this is too good for man: nothing but the inspiration of God could have given this. Likely enough men should say so; but what might be admired as a metaphor became petrified into a doctrine, and perhaps the world has never witnessed any more grotesque idol-worship than what has resulted from it in modern Bibliolatry. And yet they say we are not Christians, we cannot be religious teachers, nay, we are without religion, we are infidels, unless we believe with them. We have not yet found the liberty with which Christ has made us free. Infidels, Arthur! Ah, it is a hard word! The only infidelity I know is to distrust God, to distrust his care of us, his love for us. And yet that word! How words cling to us, and like an accursed spell force us to become what they say we have become.
Denise Levertov
(1923–1997) Poet
O Taste and See : New Poems (1964), The Secret
Context: I love them
for finding what
I can't find, and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
(1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1950s, Conquering Self-centeredness (1957)
“I often find poems hand written in old abandoned notebooks.”
Dermot Healy
(1947–2014) Irish writer
Penguin Group (2013) A Conversation with Dermot Healy http://www.us.penguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/long_time_no_see.html, Penguin US, accessed May 5, 2013
Georgia O'Keeffe
(1887–1986) American artist
In a letter to Mabel Dodge Luhan, New York 1925; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists, ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 224
1920s
“That which is most excellent, and is most to be desired by all happy, honest and healthy-minded men, is dignified leisure.”
Id quod est praestantissimum, maximeque optabile omnibus sanis et bonis et beatis, cum dignitate otium.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
(-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman
Pro Publio Sestio; Chapter XLV
