Source: Civilisation (1969), Ch. 9: The Pursuit of Happiness; "What is too silly to be said may be sung" is a commonly used translation or paraphrase of lines from Act I, Scene ii of the play The Barber of Seville by Pierre de Beaumarchais, which was the basis of famous operas.
“In my youth it was said that what was too silly to be said may be sung. In modern economics it may be put into mathematics.”
Source: 1960s-1980s, "Note on the problem of social costs", 1988, p. 185
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Ronald H. Coase 19
British economist and author 1910–2013Related quotes

“Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learnt.”
Epistle to the Reader.
The Compleat Angler (1653-1655)
Kenneth Boulding (1948) "Samuelson's Foundations: The Role of Mathematics in Economics," In: Journal of Political Economy, Vol 56 (June). as cited in: Peter J. Boettke (1998) " James M. Buchanan and the Rebirth of Political Economy http://publicchoice.info/Buchanan/files/boettke.htm". Boettke further explains "Boulding's words are even more telling today than they were then as we have seen the fruits of the formalist revolution in economic theory and how it has cut economics off from the social theoretic discourse on the human condition."
1940s

“Dreadful sorry mistress. Ma always said I was too silly to die”

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

Ainsi on peut dire que non seulement l'âme, miroir d'un univers indestructible, est indestructible, mais encore l'animal même, quoique sa machine périsse souvent en partie, et quitte ou prenne des dépouilles organiques.
La monadologie (77).
Sometimes paraphrased as: The soul is the mirror of an indestructible universe.
The Monadology (1714)