Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 310
1940s, Third inaugural address (1941)
“Come what come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.”
Source: Macbeth, Act I, scene iii.
Variant: This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: At the time, no one knew what was coming.
Source: 1Q84
“I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically.”
Quoting Samuel Johnson (16 August 1773)
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1785)
“I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative”
August 16, 1773
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)
Context: I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.
To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account (1976), p. 38
General sources
“THE best way to suppose what may come, is to remember what is past.”
Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections
Variant: THE best way to suppose what may come, is to remember what is past.
As quoted in David Crockett : His Life and Adventures (1875) by John Stevens Cabot Abbott, p. 294
Context: I know nothing, by experience, of party discipline. I would rather be a raccoon-dog, and belong to a Negro in the forest, than to belong to any party, further than to do justice to all, and to promote the interests of my country. The time will and must come, when honesty will receive its reward, and when the people of this nation will be brought to a sense of their duty, and will pause and reflect how much it cost us to redeem ourselves from the government of one man.
“Nor days nor any time detain.
Time past or any love
Cannot come again.”
Passent les jours et passent les semaines
Ni temps passé
Ni les amours reviennent
"Le Pont Mirabeau" (Mirabeau Bridge), line 19; translation by William Meredith, from Francis Steegmuller Apollinaire: Poet Among the Painters (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973) p. 193.
Alcools (1912)
