“Let the long contention cease!
Geese are swans, and swans are geese.”
St. 2
The Last Word (1867)
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Matthew Arnold 166
English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector… 1822–1888Related quotes

"A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain" (1725) https://thefederalistpapers.org/founders/franklin/benjamin-franklin-mankind-naturally-and-generally-love-to-be-flatterdm.
Context: Mankind naturally and generally love to be flatter'd: Whatever sooths our Pride, and tends to exalt our Species above the rest of the Creation, we are pleas'd with and easily believe, when ungrateful Truths shall be with the utmost Indignation rejected. "What! bring ourselves down to an Equality with the Beasts of the Field! with the meanest part of the Creation! 'Tis insufferable!" But, (to use a Piece of common Sense) our Geese are but Geese tho' we may think 'em Swans; and Truth will be Truth tho' it sometimes prove mortifying and distasteful.

Yarrow Unvisited.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan.”
Book I, ch. 16.
Discourses

“Remember that you are a Black Swan.”
Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“And swans seem whiter if swart crowes be by.”
First Week, First Day.
La Semaine; ou, Création du monde (1578)

“This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game.”
"Love the Wild Swan" (1935)
Context: This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game.
Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast
Better mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.
Does it matter whether you hate your... self?
At least Love your eyes that can see, your mind that can
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.
“Among the swans there is none called the least,
or the greatest.”
"Evidence"
Evidence (2009)