“Diogenes said once to a person who was showing him a dial, "It is a very useful thing to save a man from being too late for supper."”

— Diogenes Laërtius

Menedemus, 3.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 6: The Cynics

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biographer of ancient Greek philosophers 180–240

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“A man once asked Diogenes what was the proper time for supper, and he made answer, "If you are a rich man, whenever you please; and if you are a poor man, whenever you can."”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Diogenes, 6.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 6: The Cynics

“2420. He wrongs not an old Man, who steals his Supper from him.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1737) : He that steals the old man's supper, do's him no wrong.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“307. Hee wrongs not an old man that steales his supper from him.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

“Too late Bella. Now, it's too late. Show me.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Awakened

“It is never too late or too soon, the old man had said. It is when it is supposed to be.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Variant: It is never too late or too soon. It is when it is supposed to be.
Source: The Time Keeper

“I want to ask this congregation, every man, woman and child, to answer the question in their own heart, what kind of a being God is?... Does any man or woman know? Have any of you seen him, heard him, or communed with him?... God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by his power, was to make Himself visible,—I say, if you were to see Him today, you would see Him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with Him, as one man talks and communes with another.... It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God, and to know that we may converse with him as one man converses with another, and that He was once a man like us; yea, that God Himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did; and I will show it from the Bible.”

Joseph Smith, Jr. book History of the Church

History of the Church, 6:303-04 (7 April 1844)
1840s, King Follett discourse (1844)

“There is an excellent rule to follow; quarrel, not with the person who said the things (you can never be sure they were said), but with the person who has told of their being said.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Friendship

“My physics teacher used to say Diogenes shouldn’t have wasted his time looking for an honest man,” Shirl said, “he should have been looking for somebody who thought for himself.”

Connie Willis Bellwether

Source: Bellwether (1996), Chapter 3 “Tributaries”, Section 4 (p. 127)

“Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture.”

Thomas Merton book The Seven Storey Mountain

Source: The Seven Storey Mountain (1948), p. 91

“there are worse things
than being alone
but it often takes
decades to realize this
and most often when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than too late”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

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