“What we may do
To-morrow may perhaps decide our fate.
We may have said but yesterday some word
Which may not be recalled.”
Corinne’s Chant in the Vicinity of Naples
Translations, From the French
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Letitia Elizabeth Landon 785
English poet and novelist 1802–1838Related quotes
Context: The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true. We have a method, and that method helps us to reach not absolute truth, only asymptotic approaches to the truth — never there, just closer and closer, always finding vast new oceans of undiscovered possibilities. Cleverly designed experiments are the key.
"Remarks upon signing the Maternal and Child Health and Mental Retardation Planning Bill (434)" (24 October 1963)]
1963
“We may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.”
Introduction
The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)
“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)
Context: Word-work is sublime... because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference — the way in which we are like no other life.
We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
From an alleged Letter of to his Minister of the Interior on the Poor Laws. Pub. in The Press, Feb. 1, 1868.
Attributed
The Rubaiyat (1120)
“We may no longer be able to count; but Fate will count.”
Light (1919), Ch. XVI - De Profundis Clamavi
Context: We may no longer be able to count; but Fate will count. Some day the men will be killed, and the women and children. And they also will disappear — they who stand erect upon the ignominious death of the soldiers, — they will disappear along with the huge and palpitating pedestal in which they were rooted. But they profit by the present, they believe it will last as long as they, and as they follow each other they say, "After us, the deluge." Some day all war will cease for want of fighters.
1940s, Third inaugural address (1941)