
[199709242015.NAA10312@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997
Source: The Kite Runner
[199709242015.NAA10312@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997
“Avoid this crowd like the plague. And if they quote you, make damn sure they heard you.”
Advice about news reporters, to incoming first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, on a tour of the White House, as quoted in Newsweek magazine (30 November 1992)
“It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then like most clichés, that cliché is untrue.”
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)
Variant: It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then like most clichés, that cliché is untrue.
Dijkstra (1972) The Humble Programmer http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340.html (EWD340).
1970s
Avons-nous fui la compagnie des personnes mondaines, que les Saints conseillent, surtout aux Ecclésiastiques, d'éviter, comme des pestiférés, que l'on ne voit que par nécessité , et dont on se sépare le plutôt que l'on peut?
Examens particuliers sur divers sujets, p. 322 http://books.google.com/books?id=esY9AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA322
Examens particuliers sur divers sujets [Examination of Conscience upon Special Subjects] (1690)
“The idea had spread like wildfire …. like a moral plague, as one critic of the time had put it.”
Source: A Gift From Earth (1968), Ch. 7 : The Bleeding Heart
Context: There were organ banks all over the world, inadequately supplied by people kind enough to will their bodies to medical science.
How useful is the body of a man who dies of old age? How fast can you reach a car accident? And in 2043, Arkansas, which had never rescinded the death penalty, made the organ banks the official state method of execution.
The idea had spread like wildfire.... like a moral plague, as one critic of the time had put it.
WTF Is…? series, Guise of the Wolf (January 26, 2014)
http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.starbucks.com/retail/thewayiseeit_featuredauthor_goldberg.asp Starbucks "The Way I See It" #22]
2000s, 2005
“Alas! alas! how plague-spot like will sin
Spread over the wrung heart it enters in!”
Title poem, section VIII.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)