“A traveller at Sparta, standing long upon one leg, said to a Lacedæmonian, "I do not believe you can do as much." "True," said he, "but every goose can."”

Remarkable Speeches
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

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Plutarch251

ancient Greek historian and philosopher 46–127

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“I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: — Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Ozymandias

Ozymandias (1818)
Context: I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: — Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
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Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.