Spring it is cheery; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
20th century
“When a man has put a limit on what he will do, he has put a limit on what he can do.”
“When a man is old enough to do wrong he should be old enough to do right also.”
Source: A Woman of No Importance
"Sentimental Heart".
She & Him : Volume One (2008)
“A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it.”
On being called a legend.
Quoted in International Herald Tribune (17 July 1991); also in: [The Yale Book of Quotations, Fred R., Shapiro, Yale University Press, 2006, 9780300107982, 189]
1990s
A New Kind of Man
Song lyrics, A Sense of Wonder (1985)
“Live a good long life. Grow old and die after I do. And if you can, die laughing.”
Source: Earthsea Books, The Other Wind (2001), Chapter 1 “Mending the Green Pitcher” (pp. 47-48)
“Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.”
Der Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will.
Einstein paraphrasing Schopenhauer. Reportedly from On The Freedom Of The Will (1839), as translated in The Philosophy of American History: The Historical Field Theory (1945) by Morris Zucker, p. 531
Variant translations:
Man can do what he wants but he cannot want what he wants.
As quoted in The Motivated Brain: A Neurophysiological Analysis of Human Behavior (1991) by Pavel Vasilʹevich Simonov, p. 198
We can do what we wish, but we can only wish what we must.
As quoted by Einstein in "What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck" The Saturday Evening Post (26 October 1929) p. 17. A scan of the article is available online here http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/what_life_means_to_einstein.pdf (see p. 114).
Attributed
Source: Essays and Aphorisms
The Architecture of Theories (1891)
Context: Of the fifty or hundred systems of philosophy that have been advanced at different times of the world's history, perhaps the larger number have been, not so much results of historical evolution, as happy thoughts which have accidently occurred to their authors. An idea which has been found interesting and fruitful has been adopted, developed, and forced to yield explanations of all sorts of phenomena. … The remaining systems of philosophy have been of the nature of reforms, sometimes amounting to radical revolutions, suggested by certain difficulties which have been found to beset systems previouslv in vogue; and such ought certainly to be in large part the motive of any new theory. … When a man is about to build a house, what a power of thinking he has to do, before he can safely break ground! With what pains he has to excogitate the precise wants that are to be supplied. What a study to ascertain the most available and suitable materials, to determine the mode of construction to which those materials are best adapted, and to answer a hundred such questions! Now without riding the metaphor too far, I think we may safely say that the studies preliminary to the construction of a great theory should be at least as deliberate and thorough as those that are preliminary to the building of a dwelling-house.
