"The Man in the Drawer", in Rembrandt's Hat (1973); cited from Selected Stories (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985) p. 225
Il n'est si homme de bien, qu'il mette à l'examen des loix toutes ses actions et pensées, qui ne soit pendable dix fois en sa vie.
Book III, Ch. 9
Essais (1595), Book III
Variant: There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.
“There comes a time in every man's life when he must make way for an older man.”
Remark made in Smoking Room of House of Commons on being dropped from Margaret Thatcher's Shadow Cabinet.
Attributed
Hyperion http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5436, Bk. III, Ch. IV (1839).
Variant: Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad.
Context: "Ah! this beautiful world!" said Flemming, with a smile. "Indeed, I know not what to think of it. Sometimes it is all gladness and sunshine, and Heaven itself lies not far off. And then it changes suddenly; and is dark and sorrowful, and clouds shut out the sky. In the lives of the saddest of us, there are bright days like this, when we feel as if we could take the great world in our arms and kiss it. Then come the gloomy hours, when the fire will neither burn on our hearths nor in our hearts; and all without and within is dismal, cold, and dark. Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad."
The Walking Drum (1984)
Context: Up to a point a man’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow. The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds.
Ch. 46
Characters, ch. 9 (12); translation from R. C. Jebb and J. E. Sandys (trans.), The Characters of Theophrastus (London: Macmillan, 1909), p. 75.
“He was hanging on, looking for a life preserver. He was a desperate man clutching at straws.”
U.S. Senator Paul Laxalt, after his telephone conversation with Marcos, March 1986
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