
“It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.”
Fragment 385, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
1775
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Life of Johnson (Boswell)
“It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.”
Fragment 385, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
25 May 1830
Table Talk (1821–1834)
Canto II, line 377.
Source: Hudibras, Part II (1664)
“A man’s word must be as good as an oath sworn beneath the Light or it was no good at all.”
Source: (January 2004), Chapter 1: The Hook. p. 6
Eid and Friday Sermons
Source: Striving for Moral Excellence: The Islamic Teachings https://www.alislam.org/friday-sermon/2017-01-13.html, Friday Sermon 13th January 2017
Literary Power
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 567.
Radio message to Adolf Hitler, January 31, 1943. Quoted in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany" - Page 931 - by William Lawrence Shirer - Germany - 1990
“I no longer require
your stone gods, your ruins with legible inscriptions.”
"Archeology"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The People on the Bridge (1986)
Context: Millennia have passed
since you first called me archaeology.
I no longer require
your stone gods, your ruins with legible inscriptions.
Show me your whatever
and I'll tell you who you were.