“I could have been a great many things.”
Louisa May Alcott book Little Women
Variant: I should have been a great many things, Mr Mayor
Source: Little Women
One of These Things First
Song lyrics, Bryter Later (1970)
“I could have been a great many things.”
Louisa May Alcott book Little Women
Variant: I should have been a great many things, Mr Mayor
Source: Little Women
John Seigenthaler (1927–2014) American journalist, writer, and political figure
Reported in his Tennessean's obituary; quoted in "John Seigenthaler dies at 86" http://www.poynter.org/2014/john-seigenthaler-dies-at-86/258597/ by Andrew Beaujon, poynter.org (11 July 2014)
“My life has been the poem I would have writ,
But I could not both live and utter it.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
My Life Has Been a Poem I Would Have Writ <br class="br"> A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Friday
Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist
Travis Parker, Chapter 15, p. 192
2000s, The Choice (2007)
“History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided.”
Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967) German statesman, Federal Chancellor of Germany, politician (CDU)
Lend Me Your Ears: Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations (2010), 4th edition, edited by Antony Jay
Attributed
“I've been an idiot to think that real life could have a happy ending”
Jodi Picoult (1966) Author
Source: Between the Lines
Margrethe II of Denmark (1940) Queen of Denmark
On being a female monarch, interview with Bo Lidegaard, 'Politiken' Partially available online http://politiken.dk/indland/ECE1495013/dronningen-opgaven-som-regent-har-man-for-livet/ (01 January 2012). <br class="br">Life Philosophy
Charles Horace Mayo (1865–1939) American physician
Heard, personally, in 1921 or 1922 by the interviewer William H. Hendrix, staff writer for the New York Daily News, and later reported by Hendrix in New York Daily News, 13 March 1961; see "Animal Experiments", in Los Angeles Times, 26 October 1991 http://articles.latimes.com/1991-10-26/entertainment/ca-318_1_ecumenical-patriarch-dimitrios. Quoted in Hans Ruesch, Slaughter of the Innocent, Bantam Books, 1978, p. 235.