Quotation Q&A

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

William Storrer hopes that someone can provide a source for the quotation, supposedly from Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, that George reads aloud near the end of the second act of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The text runs: “And the West, encumbered by crippling alliances, and burdened with a morality too rigid to accommodate itself to the swing of events, must…eventually…fall.”

 

Wesley Moore asks who wrote a short unidentified poem, found on a website, that begins, “Stranger, go, tell the Spartans--/No; simply say ‘we obeyed’.../Make us sound laconic and all iron.…” and ends, “What truth soldiers would speak/None would hear, and none repeat.”

 

“Wisdom is so rare an attribute that it were better it come late than not at all” (July-August). We thank the more than two dozen readers—lawyers, law professors, a judge, and a longtime professional Supreme Court watcher among them—who wrote to identify this misstated version of a comment by Justice Felix Frankfurter, dissenting in Henslee v. Union Planters National Bank & Trust Co., 335 U.S. 595, 600 (1949). The correct wording is: “Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.” Richard Spector’s reply was the first to reach us. Dominic Ayotte noted that the case does concern the estate tax. And Anthony Shipps offered the gentle reminder that a query about the same quotation ran in this column in May-June 1986, and was answered in the subsequent issue by B. Abbott Goldberg and Erwin Griswold.

Send inquiries and answers to “Chapter and Verse,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge 02138, or via e-mail to chapterandverse@harvardmag.com.

Most popular

Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival

Without Christopher Marlowe, there might not have been a Bard.

How MAGA Went Mainstream at Harvard

Trump, TikTok, and the pandemic are reshaping Gen Z politics.

How AI Could Be Raising Your Energy Bill

Utilities shift AI infrastructure costs onto consumers.

Explore More From Current Issue

Man splashing water on his face at outdoor fountain beside woman holding cup near stone building.

Why Heat Waves Make You Miserable

Scientists are studying how much heat and humidity the human body can take.

Johnston Gate

Your Views on Harvard’s Standoff, Antisemitism, and More

Readers comment on the controversial July-August cover, authoritarianism, and scientific research.

People sit in lawn chairs near a rustic barn at Cider Garden in New Salem on a sunny day.

CiderDays Festival Celebrates All Things Apple

Visiting small-batch cideries and orchards in Massachusetts