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Natural Born Killer : Chapter & Verse : Open Book : Off the Shelf

Paul G. Seybold hopes to learn whom to credit for the statement, "It takes more than facts to change men's minds. It takes time."

Marian Shapiro is seeking the author of the line-not from Felicia Hemans's "Casabianca"-"Father, can't (don't?) you see I'm burning?"

William Tyler hopes to find sources for two quotations cited by Japanese short story writer Jun Ishikawa. "Feigning deafness may be forgivable, but taken to extremes, it may cost one's life" is attributed only to an unnamed "famous foreign playwright." The second quotation, ascribed to "a poet from the West from long, long ago," reads: "Nothing is more likely to propel us headlong down the path to barbarism than a single-minded obsession with the concept of spiritual purity."

Dwight K. Oxley requests the identity of the author of the statement, "Tomorrow is promised to no one."

Christopher Killelea would like to know which American president advised, "When the action gets heavy, keep the rhetoric cool."

Charles Baker hopes to find a citation for the statement, "Those who will not participate must suffer the rule of lesser men."

Vincent Sarich would like to confirm that Scottish historian Alexander Tytler wrote, "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury." P.J. O'Rourke quotes the statement in Parliament of Whores, but no source is cited.

Larry Denenberg is looking for a passage, possibly by Spenser, that refers to Clio, the muse of history, as "first among the muses."

Dave Johnson would like a source for the following quotation, attributed to E.B. White: "It is easier for a man to be loyal to his club than to his planet; the by-laws are shorter and he is personally acquainted with the members."

Gilbert Rutter hopes to find the source of the line, "Whirl is king, having driven out Zeus."

"Truth is subaltern" (March-April). Anthony Shipps found this slightly misremembered line in the last stanza of W.H. Auden's poem "The Common Life."

"the sin of being born" (March-April). Donald McGrady was first to locate this quotation, in the first scene of Pedro Calderon de la Barca's play La Vida es Sueño. Stephen Donatelli located Samuel Beckett's version on page 49 of his Proust (1973).

"When Cicero spoke, men marveled" (March-April). Arthur Schlesinger Jr., citing "L'Envoi," an article by Murray Kempton in the New York Post of November 2, 1960, pointed out that Adlai Stevenson used these words to introduce John F. Kennedy during a presidential campaign rally that fall.

"the chains of the Constitution" (March-April). Mary Chatfield and Sharon Fenick were the first to identify Jefferson's Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 as the source of this quotation, which appears toward the end of resolution number 8.

Inquiries and answers should be directed to Chapter and Verse, Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138. Readers seeking complete texts of poems or passages identified for others are asked to include a stamped, self-addressed, legal-sized envelope with their requests.

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