Last words (May 10, 1863); as quoted in "Stonewall Jackson's Last Days" by Joe D. Haines, Jr. in America's Civil War
Je passais au bord de la Seine
Un livre ancien sous le bras
Le fleuve est pareil à ma peine
Il s'écoule et ne tarit pas
Quand donc finira la semaine
"Marie", line 21; translation from Donald Revell (trans.) Alcools (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1995) p. 75.
Alcools (1912)
Redwood Tree
Song lyrics, Saint Dominic's Preview (1972)
“Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of this scene”
Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Source: Attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 262.
“Come! Let us lay a lance in rest,
And tilt at windmills under a wild sky!”
Errantry, St. 1, Moods, Songs and Doggerels (1912)
Moods, Songs and Doggerels (1912)
Context: Come! Let us lay a lance in rest,
And tilt at windmills under a wild sky!
For who would live so petty and unblest
That dare not tilt at something ere he die;
Rather than, screened by safe majority,
Preserve his little life to little end,
And never raise a rebel cry!
Sejamos simples e calmos,
Como os regatos e as árvores,
E Deus amar-nos-á fazendo de nós
Belos como as árvores e os regatos,
E dar-nos-á verdor na sua primavera,
E um rio aonde ir ter quando acabemos...
E não nos dará mais nada, porque dar-nos mais seria tirar-nos mais.
Alberto Caeiro (heteronym), O Guardador de Rebanhos ("The Keeper of Sheep"), VI — in A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe, trans. Richard Zenith (Penguin, 2006)
“Crossing the river by feeling the stones”
摸着石头过河 (mō zhe shítou guòhé)
Meaning: proceed gradually, by experimentation.
Traditional saying, first used in Chinese Communist context by Chen Yun, 1980 December 16, then popularized by Deng 1984 October. Frequently misattributed to Deng.
Misattributed or apocryphal
Source: Henry He, Dictionary of the Political Thought of the People's Republic of China, Routledge, 2016, ISBN 978-1-31550044-7, p. 287 https://books.google.com/books?id=XSi3DAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA287&dq=%22cross%20the%20river%20by%20feeling%20the%20stones%22&pg=PA287#v=onepage
Source: Evan Osnos, Boom Doctor https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/11/boom-doctor, New Yorker, October 11, 2010:
The strategy, as Chen Yun put it, was “crossing the river by feeling for the stones.” (Deng, inevitably, received credit for the expression.)
Source: Chinese land reform: A world to turn upside down https://www.economist.com/briefing/2013/10/31/a-world-to-turn-upside-down, The Economist, 2013 October 31
Liu Hongzhi, who oversees the scheme, quotes a famous phrase often attributed to Deng, though in fact coined by a colleague: “We are crossing the river by feeling the stones.”
