“We might have been! — these are but common words,
And yet they make the sum of life's bewailing;”
The Monthly Magazine
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Letitia Elizabeth Landon 785
English poet and novelist 1802–1838Related quotes
“The principal might yield a greater sum,
Yet handled ill, amounts but to this crumb;”
To Her Father with Some Verses.
“We are the sum of all we have done added to the sum of all that has been done to us.”
Source: Golden Fool
“The unexpected connections we make might not last, yet stay with us forever”
Source: Lost in Translation
“For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"”
Bret Harte wrote a famous parody of this famous poem, "Mrs. Judge Jenkins" in which the Judge marries Maud, and which he ends with the lines:
Maud soon thought the Judge a bore,
With all his learning and all his lore;
And the Judge would have bartered Maud's fair face
For more refinement and social grace.
If, of all words of tongue and pen,
The saddest are, "It might have been,"
More sad are these we daily see:
"It is, but hadn't ought to be".
Maud Muller (1856)
Context: Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge!
God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
Original German: Man könnte den ganzen Sinn des Buches etwa in die Worte fassen: Was sich überhaupt sagen lässt, lässt sich klar sagen; und wovon man nicht reden kann, darüber muss man schweigen.
Introduction
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)
“Snow White” [play], p. 324.
The Teachings of Don. B: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme (1992)
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VIII : From God to God