Source: Argonautica, Book I, Lines 109–110
Tela puer facilesque umeris gaudentibus arcus gestat Hylas.
“Her burdens were her own and burdens were for shoulders strong enough to bear them.”
Variant: Burdens are for shoulders strong enough to carry them.
Source: Gone with the Wind
“He lifted the violin to his shoulder then, and raised the bow. And he played.”
Source: Clockwork Princess
“Is it for this purpose that we are strong—that we may have light burdens to bear?”
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXXVIII: On the Healing Power of the Mind
“A gentleman accepts the responsibility of his actions and bears the burden of their consequences.”
The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems (1899), The Man With the Hoe (1898)
Context: Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes.
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
“May Morning, as the proverb runs, appear
Bearing glad tidings from his mother Night!”
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, lines 264–265 (tr. E. H. Plumptre)
“The world is not changing if you don’t shoulder the burden of responsibility.”
Ai Weiwei Twitter feed: @AiWW(4:19 p.m. December 2, 2009).
2000-09, Twitter feeds, 2009
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 88
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 262.
