Samuel Butler quote: “It is hard upon the duckling to have been hatched by a hen, but is it not also hard upon the hen to have hatched the du…”

“Money is for doing things, my love. Don't sit on it like a hen sits on an egg. It doesn't hatch. I should know. I've made enough of it.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: The Last Little Blue Envelope

“I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turning into confident ducks.”

Maeve Binchy (1940–2012) Irish novelist

“In the interests of research
I have walked on many battlefields
that once were liquid with pulped
men’s bodies and spangled with exploded
shells and splayed bone.
All of them have been green again
by the time I got there.
Each has inspired a few good quotes in its day.
Sad marble angels brood like hens
over the grassy nests where nothing hatches.”

Margaret Atwood book Morning in the Burned House

Morning in the Burned House (1995), The Loneliness of the Military Historian

“It is ugly ducklings, grown either into swans or into remarkably big, remarkably ugly ducks, who are responsible for most works of art; and yet how few of these give a truthful account of what it was like to be an ugly duckling!—it is almost as if the grown, successful swan had repressed most of the memories of the duckling’s miserable, embarrassing, magical beginnings.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

The memories are deeply humiliating in two ways: they remind the adult that he was once more ignorant and gullible and emotional than he is; and they remind him that he once was, potentially, far more than he is.
“An Unread Book”, p. 19
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

“It is ugly ducklings, grown either into swans or into remarkably big, remarkably ugly ducks, who are responsible for most works of art; and yet how few of these give a truthful account of what it was like to be an ugly duckling!”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

it is almost as if the grown, successful swan had repressed most of the memories of the duckling’s miserable, embarrassing, magical beginnings. (The memories are deeply humiliating in two ways: they remind the adult that he was once more ignorant and gullible and emotional than he is; and they remind him that he once was, potentially, far more than he is.)

“An Unread Book”, p. 19
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

“2916. It is better to have a Hen to Morrow, than an Egg to Day.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1734) : An Egg to day is better than a Hen to-morrow.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“It is ugly ducklings, grown either into swans or into remarkably big, remarkably ugly ducks, who are responsible for most works of art; and yet how few of these give a truthful account of what it was like to be an ugly duckling!—it is almost as if the grown, successful swan had repressed most of the memories of the duckling’s miserable, embarrassing, magical beginnings. (The memories are deeply humiliating in two ways: they remind the adult that he was once more ignorant and gullible and emotional than he is; and they remind him that he once was, potentially, far more than he is.)”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“An Unread Book”, p. 19
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

“[W]hen it came to the iWatch, also a name that Apple didn't own, Apple walked away from it and instead launched the Apple Watch. Certainly, no risk of litigation, but the product's sales are a fraction of what they otherwise might have been with the proper name and branding.”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

Putting Legal in Its Place: Why Companies Shouldn't Be Run by Execs with 'No' as Their Middle Names http://itbusinessedge.com/blogs/unfiltered-opinion/putting-legal-in-its-place-why-companies-shouldnt-be-run-by-execs-with-no-as-their-middle-names.html in IT Business Edge (18 May 2017)

“A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Life and Habit http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/lfhb10h.htm, ch. 8 (1877)

“[W]hen you encounter certain things in the world, the evidence for certain things, you realize that you have come upon somethin that you may very well not be equal to and I think that this is one of them things. When you've said that it's real and not just in your head I'm not all that sure what it is you have said.”

Cormac McCarthy book No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men (2005)

“It is hard upon the duckling to have been hatched by a hen, but is it not also hard upon the hen to have hatched the duckling?”

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