“If any ask, with what Confidence I durst adventure upon a Task so unusuall, as interpreting of Letters committed to Cipher; I shall only give this plain Account thereof.”

p, 125
An Essay on the Art of Decyphering (1737)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If any ask, with what Confidence I durst adventure upon a Task so unusuall, as interpreting of Letters committed to Cip…" by John Wallis?

John Wallis34

English mathematician 1616–1703

Related quotes

“Confidence always pleases those who receive it. It is a tribute we pay to their merit, a deposit we commit to their trust, a pledge which gives them a claim upon us, a kind of dependence to which we voluntarily submit. I do not wish from what I have said to depreciate confidence, so necessary to man.”

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) French author of maxims and memoirs

Reflections on Various Subjects (1665–1678), I. On Confidence

“This letter writing is a miserable way of communicating, after all, though I would not on any account be deprived of it. But when ones soul is full, and only a little sheet, to put it into, it is so aggravating.”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

Letter to Antoinette Brown (c. August 1849) as quoted in Friends and Sisters: Letters Between Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell, 1846–93 (1987) edited by Carol Lasser and Marlene Merrill
Context: This letter writing is a miserable way of communicating, after all, though I would not on any account be deprived of it. But when ones soul is full, and only a little sheet, to put it into, it is so aggravating. There are so many things I want to say, and feel with you, that I dont know where to begin.

“It is not the task of the University to offer what society asks for, but to give what society needs.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra (2000), "Answers to questions from students of Software Engineering" http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd13xx/EWD1305.PDF (EWD 1305). <br class="br">2000s

“If So-and-so challenges me, I shall lay before you a careful account of what I have said and done; if that does not satisfy him, I shall reciprocate his dislike of me.”
Siquidem locutus aliter fuerit, dabo operam ut rationem factorum meorum dictorumque reddam; si perseveraverit, in vicem eum odero.

Tiberius (-42–37 BC) 2nd Emperor of Ancient Rome, member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty

From Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, ch. 28

“I am entitled to say of that opinion what any discriminating reader must think of it — that it was as foggy as the statute the Attorney General was asked to interpret.”

Robert H. Jackson (1892–1954) American judge

Reviewing a position that Jackson had taken as Attorney General, which he now felt should be overruled. McGrath v. Kristensen, 340 U.S. 162, 176 (1950) (concurring)
Judicial opinions

“[…] it is now only in letters I write what I feel: not in literature any more, and I seldom say it, because I keep trying to be amusing.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Source: Commonplace Book (1985), p. 92 (26-2-32)

“Even things without life that give sound, whether pipe or harp, except they give a distinction of sounds, how shall it be known what is piped or harped? For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? So likewise you, except you utter by the tongue plain speech, how shall it be known what is said? For you shall be speaking into the air.”

Paul of Tarsus book First Epistle to the Corinthians

1 Corinthians 14:7-9 (as quoted in Catholic Bible Douay-Rehims http://www.biblebible.com/text-bible/Catholic-Bible/1_corinthians_14.asp) <br class="br">First Epistle to the Corinthians