
“Every man was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book IV, Ch. 73.
Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
Context: Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying
“Every man was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book IV, Ch. 73.
Awake, My Heart, to Be Loved http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=6639&poem=27759, l. 1-3.
Poetry
“Unlike some people, I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth.”
Misquoted by [2012-04-18, Allahpundit, Obama: Unlike some people, I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth, Hot Air, http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/18/obama-unlike-some-people-i-wasnt-born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-my-mouth/, 2012-10-08], and publicized by Steve Doocy, Fox & Friends (), Fox News
President Obama actually said, in a campaign speech in Elyria, Ohio http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2012/04/18/president-obama-speaks-skills-american-workers on , "Somebody gave me an education. <span style="color:gray">I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth.</span> Michelle wasn't. But somebody gave us a chance, just like these folks up here are looking for a chance."
2012-04-23
Steve Doocy's Silver Spoon Subtext Reporting
The Colbert Report
Comedy Central
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/413071/april-23-2012/steve-doocy-s-subtext-reporting
Misattributed
Source: The Keys to the Kingdom series, Mister Monday (2003), p. 241.
Though "the Bard" is often reference to William Shakespeare, Fuller here probably uses the term in a generic sense, and in tribute to the poet-philosopher she considered in some ways her mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who may have made such a statement, which she elsewhere quotes as "I have witnessed many a shipwreck, yet still beat noble hearts".
Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)
Context: I stand in the sunny noon of life. Objects no longer glitter in the dews of morning, neither are yet softened by the shadows of evening. Every spot is seen, every chasm revealed. Climbing the dusty hill, some fair effigies that once stood for symbols of human destiny have been broken; those I still have with me show defects in this broad light. Yet enough is left, even by experience, to point distinctly to the glories of that destiny; faint, but not to be mistaken streaks of the future day. I can say with the bard,
"Though many have suffered shipwreck, still beat noble hearts."
Always the soul says to us all, Cherish your best hopes as a faith, and abide by them in action. Such shall be the effectual fervent means to their fulfilment.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), III Six books on Light and Shade