“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.' (quoting John Greenleaf Whittier)”

— P.G. Wodehouse

The Man Upstairs (1914)

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P.G. Wodehouse 302

English author 1881–1975

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“For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"”

John Greenleaf Whittier Maud Muller

Bret Harte wrote a famous parody of this famous poem, "Mrs. Judge Jenkins" in which the Judge marries Maud, and which he ends with the lines:
Maud soon thought the Judge a bore,
With all his learning and all his lore;
And the Judge would have bartered Maud's fair face
For more refinement and social grace.
If, of all words of tongue and pen,
The saddest are, "It might have been,"
More sad are these we daily see:
"It is, but hadn't ought to be".
Maud Muller (1856)
Context: Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge!
God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"

“Though a crucified life or an agonized death,
Though long, or quick and sharp,
I am firmly wrought in the endless thread
Of Destiny's woof and warp.
And I do not shrink, though a wave of pain
Sobs over me now and then,
As I think of those "saddest of all sad words,"
The pitiful "might have been."”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

And Thou Too (1888)

“My tongue, not my pen, is my instrument.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Conversation with Thomas Jones (7 January 1946), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 540.
1940s

“The saddest kind of sad is the sad that tries not to be sad. You know, when Sad tries to bite its lip and not cry and smile and go, "No, I'm happy for you?"”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

That's when it's really sad.
Rolling Stone magazine/iTunes podcast (December 2005)
On the "chin-up sad" tone of one of his new songs on his upcoming album "Continuum"

“Words are tears that have been written down. Tears are words that need to be shed. Without them, joy loses all its brilliance and sadness has no end.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

“The pen is the tongue of the soul; as are the thoughts engendered there, so will be the things written.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

La pluma es la lengua del alma: cuales fueren los conceptos que en ella se engendraren, tales serán sus escritos.
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 16, as translated by Henry Edward Watts (1895).

“Aid the dawning, tongue and pen;
Aid it, hopes of honest men!”

Charles Mackay (1814–1889) British writer

"Clear the Way".
Legends of the Isles and Other Poems (1851)

“"You know, I'm a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard - in other words a netbook - will be the mainstream on that." quoted in”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

February 2010
http://blogs.bnet.com/corporate-strategy/?p=101
2000s

“It is a sad thing when men have neither enough intelligence to speak well, nor enough sense to hold their tongues; this is the root of all impertinence.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

18
Variant translation:
It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well, nor the judgment to hold their tongues.
As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: being A Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern (1908) edited by Tryon Edwards, p. 560
Les Caractères (1688), De la société et de la conversation

“When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a phrenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted.”

Thomas Paine book Rights of Man

Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.' (quoting John Greenleaf Whittier)”

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P.G. Wodehouse 302

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