
“When a man has put a limit on what he will do, he has put a limit on what he can do.”
A New Kind of Man
Song lyrics, A Sense of Wonder (1985)
“When a man has put a limit on what he will do, he has put a limit on what he can do.”
The He-Ancient, in Pt. V
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)
"The Man in the Drawer", in Rembrandt's Hat (1973); cited from Selected Stories (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985) p. 225
“When a man is in doubt what to do, he goes wherever he happens to be first called.”
Kopal-Kundala, Chapter IV: With the Kapálik translated by Henry Arthur Deuteros Phillips (1885)
Art Nonsense and Other Essays (1929), published by Cassell; quoted in Eric Gill: Man of Flesh and Spirit by Malcolm Yorke, published by Tauris Parke ISBN 1-86064-584-4, p. 49
“When he is forsaken,
Withered and shaken,
What can an old man do but die?”
Spring it is cheery; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
20th century
1950s, Conquering Self-centeredness (1957)