
Political Aphorisms, Moral and Philosophical Thoughts (1848)
15 January 1753
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)
Political Aphorisms, Moral and Philosophical Thoughts (1848)
“There is great skill in knowing how to conceal one's skill.”
C'est une grande habileté que de savoir cacher son habileté.
Maxim 245.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
“Where a man calls himself by a name which is not his name, he is telling a falsehood.”
Reddaway v. Banham (1895), L. R. 2 Q. B. D. [1895], p. 293.
“Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends.”
Part 1, Chapter 11 (page 35)
Notes from Underground (1864)
Context: Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has others which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But finally there are still others which a man is even afraid to tell himself, and every decent man has a considerable number of such things stored away. That is, one can even say that the more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind.
“Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.”
Falsehood, iii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIX - Truth and Convenience
“One ought to go too far, in order to know how far one can go.”
Sie muss also zu weit gehen, um herauszufinden, wie weit sie gehen darf.
"Die Freiheit der Kunst", speech delivered at Wuppertal on September 24, 1966; cited from Cultura 21 magazine http://www.cultura21.de/magazin/denkanstosse/d20050930a.html, September 30, 2005. Translation: Walter Laqueur Germany Today: A Personal Report (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985) p. 130.
River Man
Song lyrics, Five Leaves Left (1969)
Variant: Going to see the river man.
Going to tell him all I can
About the ban
On feeling free.If he tells me all he knows
About the way his river flows,
I don't suppose
It's meant for me.
1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989), Farewell Address (1989)
Phillips v. Briard (1856), 4 W. R. 487.