
“A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.”
December 21, 1762
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I
XIX. 13 (tr. Robert Fagles); Odysseus to Telemachus.
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)
Αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐφέλκεται ἄνδρα σίδηρος.
“A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.”
December 21, 1762
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I
“And thou, vast ocean! on whose awful face
Time’s iron feet can print no ruin-trace.”
The Omnipresence of the Deity, Part i, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Man marks the earth with ruin,—his control / Stops with the shore", Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto iv, stanza 179.
Sermon preach at St. Marys, December 10, 1661, in Twelve Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions (1727), Vol. 3, p. 140
“Power is like matter, it has gravity, it clumps and then starts to draw more into itself.”
Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 4, “Green Earth” (p. 166)
“The name of an iron man goes round the world.
It takes a long time to forget an iron man.”
"Washington Monument by Night" in Slabs of the Sunburnt West (1922)
“Lies are rust on iron. A blemish on power.”
Source: Golden Son (2015), Ch. 15: Truth; Aja
Source: Jerusalem, or on Religious Power and Judaism (1783), p. 73
“I’m being ironic. Don't interrupt a man in the midst of being ironic, it’s not polite.”
Usher II (1950)
Source: The Martian Chronicles (1950)
p, 125
Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824)