“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace”
The Crisis No. I.
1770s, The American Crisis (1776–1783)
Context: I once felt all that kind of anger, which a man ought to feel, against the mean principles that are held by the Tories: a noted one, who kept a tavern at Amboy, was standing at his door], with as pretty a child in his hand, about eight or nine years old, as I ever saw, and after speaking his mind as freely as he thought was prudent, finished with this unfatherly expression, "Well! give me [[peace in my day."
Not a man lives on the continent but fully believes that a separation must some time or other finally take place, and a generous parent should have said, "If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace;" and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty.
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Thomas Paine 262
English and American political activist 1737–1809Related quotes
The King's Tragedy, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 315]
My Old Kentucky Home. As quoted at Anthology of American Poetry, by George Gesner, (1983).
"Days I enjoy", quoted in Vita and Virginia: The Work and Friendship of V. Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf (1993) by Suzanne Raitt, p. 89
Context: Days I enjoy are days when nothing happens,
When I have no engagements written on my block,
When no one comes to disturb my inward peace,
When no one comes to take me away from myself
And turn me into a patchwork, a jig-saw puzzle,
A broken mirror that once gave a whole reflection,
Being so contrived that it takes too long a time
To get myself back to myself when they have gone.
“I must decline your offer with thanks, for the child might have my beauty and your brains.”
Anecdote presented in "Isadore Duncan : Dancer as Plaything of Fate" in A Century of Sundays : 100 years of Breaking News in the Sunday Papers (2006), by Nadine Dreyer, p. 65 http://books.google.com/books?id=5rFGX4z8-S8C&pg=PA65&dq=%22Love+is+an+illusion;+it+is+the+world's+greatest+mistake%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=NPAkT7mJDJKy0AH5vcXkCA&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22Love%20is%20an%20illusion%3B%20it%20is%20the%20world's%20greatest%20mistake%22&f=false; the anecdote provided here does not cite earlier sources, and though widely attributed to an exchange between Duncan and Shaw, the earliest form of it yet located is in 10,000 Jokes, Toasts & Stories (1939) by Lewis & Faye Copeland, which simply has an unidentified woman offering to have a child with Shaw, saying "think of the child with your brains and my beauty" and him replying "But what if he were to have your brains and my beauty?"
Disputed
Context: [Isadora Duncan] wrote to George Bernard Shaw: "Will you be the father of my next child? A combination of my beauty and your brains would startle the world," but he replied: "I must decline your offer with thanks, for the child might have my beauty and your brains."
Source: All That Matters (1922), p.30 - The Boy's Ideal, final stanza.
As quoted in The Story of Walt Disney (1957)