“Let me be the one
To do what is done.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet
Ten Mills : Assertive
1920s, Further Range (1926)
Often attributed, but without a contemporary source, as a remark on being asked to contribute to charity for the poor. See for example Commodore (2009) by Edward J. Renehan
“Let me be the one
To do what is done.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet
Ten Mills : Assertive
1920s, Further Range (1926)
Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet
¿Y para qué debo arrepentirme de lo que he hecho, si no puedo dejar de hacer lo que hago, que es lo que he hecho?
Voces (1943)
Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations
From Time magazine's interview with King, Volume XL, Number 23 (December 7, 1942), p. 32.
1940s
Karen Blixen book Seven Gothic Tales
"The Dreamers"
Seven Gothic Tales (1934)
Context: The consolations of the vulgar are bitter in the royal ear. Let physicians and confectioners and servants in the great houses be judged by what they have done, and even by what they have meant to do; the great people themselves are judged by what they are. I have been told that lions, trapped and shut up in cages, grieve from shame more than from hunger.
“I have done this to show what an Englishman can do.”
Robert Falcon Scott (1868–1912) Royal Navy officer and explorer
Note found on his corpse; quoted in Bruce Chatwin, What am I Doing Here?
Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN
Speech, (3 November 1952) as quoted in "The Graceful Loser" in TIME (23 July 1965) http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,841890,00.html
Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) French chemist and microbiologist
The life of Pasteur (1911), Volume II http://archive.org/stream/lifeofpasteurtra02valluoft/lifeofpasteurtra02valluoft_djvu.txt. p. 228 <br class="br">Variant translation: "Do not let yourself be tainted with a barren skepticism.", as quoted in The Louisville & Nashville Employes' Magazine Vol. 20 (1944), p. 28
Robert A. Heinlein book Beyond This Horizon
Source: Beyond This Horizon (1948; originally serialized in 1942), Chapter 14, “—and beat him when he sneezes”, p. 130