
“Many a man is given what is intended for another, but no man is given another's fate.”
Source: The Wife
Source: What Men Live By (1881), Ch. IV
Context: Go — take the mother's soul, and learn three truths: Learn What dwells in man, What is not given to man, and What men live by. When thou hast learnt these things, thou shalt return to heaven.
“Many a man is given what is intended for another, but no man is given another's fate.”
Source: The Wife
1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)
Context: We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism. The home that all too many Americans left was solidly structured idealistically; its pillars were solidly grounded in the insights of our Judeo-Christian heritage. All men are made in the image of God. All men are brothers. All men are created equal. Every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth. Every man has rights that are neither conferred by, nor derived from the State — they are God-given. Out of one blood, God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. What a marvelous foundation for any home! What a glorious and healthy place to inhabit. But America's strayed away, and this unnatural excursion has brought only confusion and bewilderment. It has left hearts aching with guilt and minds distorted with irrationality.
“What man needs is silence and warmth; what he is given is an icy pandemonium.”
Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Human Personality (1943), p. 59
Context: A modern factory reaches perhaps almost the limit of horror. Everybody in it is constantly harassed and kept on edge by the interference of extraneous wills while the soul is left in cold and desolate misery. What man needs is silence and warmth; what he is given is an icy pandemonium.
Physical labour may be painful, but it is not degrading as such. It is not art; it is not science; it is something else, possessing an exactly equal value with art and science, for it provides an equal opportunity to reach the impersonal stage of attention.
Source: Existence (1958), p. 13; also published in The Discovery of Being : Writings in Existential Psychology (1983), Part II : The Cultural Background, Ch. 5 : Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Freud, p. 52
“What about what he lives for, Squire? Isn't that the true measure of a man, what he lives for?”
Jim Hawkins, Act II, Scene 6
Long Joan Silver (2013)
Source: Your Forces and How to Use Them (1912), p. 107
As quoted in Letters of H. L. Mencken (1961) edited by Guy J. Forgue, p. xiii
1940s–present